Backups & upgrades

Where your data lives

Everything is in the folder mounted at /app/data:

data/
├── pethealth.db       # SQLite database (all records)
├── backups/           # automatic snapshots
└── uploads/
    ├── photos/        # pet photos
    ├── pdfs/          # lab exam PDFs
    └── attachments/   # checkup and exam attachments

Uploaded files never change once written; they get random names and are deleted when their record is deleted.

Automatic backups

PetHealth takes a consistent snapshot of the database with SQLite’s online backup API, which is safe while the app is running:

• every BACKUP_INTERVAL_HOURS hours (default 24; checked hourly and at startup),
• keeping the newest BACKUP_KEEP files (default 7),
• in data/backups/pethealth-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-mmm.db.

Take one manually at any time:

docker exec pethealth npm run backup

Caution

Snapshots live inside data/, on the same disk. They protect you from mistakes, not from losing the disk. Copy data/ somewhere else regularly (another disk, a NAS, cloud storage).

Full backup

Copying the whole data/ folder is a complete backup, since it holds the database and every upload. For a perfectly consistent copy, either stop the container first or copy the latest snapshot from data/backups/ together with uploads/.

docker compose stop
tar czf pethealth-backup-$(date +%F).tar.gz data
docker compose start

Restore

docker compose down
# Option A: restore a full copy
rm -rf data && tar xzf pethealth-backup-2026-10-01.tar.gz
# Option B: roll the database back to a snapshot
rm -f data/pethealth.db-wal data/pethealth.db-shm
cp data/backups/pethealth-20261001-080000-123.db data/pethealth.db
docker compose up -d

PetHealth runs SQLite in WAL mode. When you replace pethealth.db by hand, always delete the -wal and -shm files next to it first. Otherwise SQLite may try to apply leftover changes to the restored file.

Moving a single pet

To move one pet (with all its files) to another account or another PetHealth server, use Export pet (ZIP) on its profile and Import on the other dashboard. See Reports & export.

Upgrading

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

• Schema changes are applied automatically at startup (versioned migrations). You’ll see 🔄 Migración N aplicada in the logs when one runs.
• Take a backup first, and read the release notes.
• Downgrading to an older image after a migration isn’t supported. Restore the backup you took before upgrading instead.