DBS — Django Backup Solution

🚧 Under development. DBS is in active development and its API may change.

Created by Sudum Technology — Research and Development sector. Our very tiny contribution to this world.

A backup library you drop into a Django project's source. It reads your models, relations and files and writes one encrypted file that is redundant and self-healing: every backup stores two copies of the data plus Reed-Solomon parity, so silent corruption — the kind a non-ECC RAM stick produces — is detected and repaired on restore instead of quietly poisoning your data.

io  ──►  security (Argon2id + AES-256-GCM)  ──►  integrity (2 copies · per-block
hashes · Reed-Solomon)  ──►  data (models · relations · files)

Features

• Two self-healing copies in one file plus Reed-Solomon parity for bit-rot.
• Per-field mapping: value, embedded file, or file-path.
• Passphrase-derived key, never stored (Argon2id).
• Per-file and per-block integrity hashes.
• CLI · admin-UI download · SFTP.

Install

pip install django-dbs          # core
pip install "django-dbs[ssh]"   # + SFTP transport (paramiko)

Add the app:

INSTALLED_APPS = [..., "dbs"]

Quick start

1. (Optional) declare what to back up

By default DBS auto-discovers every model, treats FileField/ImageField as files, and preserves relations. Register a model only to override the defaults — in a dbs.py module inside your app (auto-discovered like admin.py):

# myapp/dbs.py
from dbs import backup_registry, FieldType, ModelBackup
from .models import Invoice

@backup_registry.register(Invoice)
class InvoiceBackup(ModelBackup):
    overrides = {
        "scanned_pdf_path": FieldType.FILE_PATH,  # CharField holding a path -> embed the file
        "render_cache": FieldType.EXCLUDE,        # don't back this column up
    }
    file_roots = ["/srv/myapp/uploads"]           # extra non-model file trees

FieldType values: VALUE (default), FILE (embed a FileField's bytes), FILE_PATH (a string column whose path's file is embedded), EXCLUDE.

2. Back up / restore / validate from the CLI

python manage.py dbs_backup   backup.dbs            # prompts for a passphrase
python manage.py dbs_validate backup.dbs            # structural check, no passphrase
python manage.py dbs_validate backup.dbs -p secret  # + verify decryption
python manage.py dbs_restore  backup.dbs            # restore rows + files

The passphrase comes from --passphrase, then $DBS_PASSPHRASE, then a prompt.

3. Download / upload from the admin UI

# urls.py
urlpatterns += [path("dbs/", include("dbs.contrib.urls"))]

Superusers can then visit /dbs/backup/ to download an encrypted backup and /dbs/restore/ to upload one. The passphrase is entered in the form and never stored server-side.

4. Ship a backup to another server (SFTP)

# settings.py — profiles reference a key by path; no secrets embedded
DBS_SSH_TARGETS = {
    "offsite": {
        "host": "backups.example.com", "username": "deploy",
        "key_filename": "/home/deploy/.ssh/id_ed25519",
        "remote_dir": "/var/backups/myproject",
        "known_hosts": "/home/deploy/.ssh/known_hosts",
    }
}

from dbs import create_backup
from dbs.transports import SSHTarget, push_backup

data = create_backup("my passphrase")
push_backup(data, "backup.dbs", SSHTarget.from_settings("offsite"))

Python API

from dbs import create_backup, restore_backup, validate_backup

blob = create_backup("passphrase", output="backup.dbs")
report = validate_backup(blob, "passphrase")   # report.ok / report.summary()
result = restore_backup(blob, "passphrase")    # result.healed is True if it repaired corruption

How it heals

On write, the encrypted stream is split into blocks; each block gets a BLAKE2b hash and a layer of Reed-Solomon parity, and the whole stream is stored twice (plus the header and manifest are stored twice). On read, each block is taken from whichever copy verifies; sparse bit-flips are corrected in place by Reed-Solomon even when both copies are hit. Every recovered block is checked against its stored hash, so a mis-correction can never slip through — and a freshly written backup is re-read and verified end-to-end (verify-after-write) before the command reports success.

What it can recover from: whole-block loss in one copy, and sparse byte errors (up to the parity budget, ~8 bytes per 255-byte codeword by default) in both copies. What it cannot: a block destroyed beyond the parity budget in both copies — DBS then refuses to restore and reports exactly which blocks failed, rather than producing silently wrong data.

Security model

• Argon2id derives a key from your passphrase (memory-hard ⇒ brute-force resistant). Raise KDFParams cost for more resistance.
• Envelope encryption: a random data key encrypts the payload with AES-256-GCM; that data key is wrapped by the passphrase-derived key. The file stores only the salt, Argon2 parameters and the wrapped key — never the passphrase and never the raw data key.
• A wrong passphrase fails the GCM tag check and is reported as such; it can never yield partial/garbage data.

Settings reference

Setting	Purpose
DBS_EXCLUDE_MODELS	["app.Model", ...] to skip (defaults skip contenttypes, permissions, admin log, sessions).
DBS_FILE_ROOTS	Extra directories embedded in every backup.
DBS_SSH_TARGETS	Named SFTP connection profiles.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

License

MIT