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Vaultwarden Backup

A simple cron powered backup image for vaultwarden.

⚠️ Since Bitwarden_RS has been renamed to Vaultwarden I also renamend this project to vaultwarden-backup. I will continue pushing the Image also to the old Docker repository for convenience. However you should also switch to the new Docker repository https://hub.docker.com/r/bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup if you find some time. To do so just replace the bruceforce/bw_backup image by bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup.

Why vaultwarden-backup?

You might ask yourself "Why should I use a container for backing up my vaultwarden files if I can just include them in my regular backup?". One caveat of using regular backup software for databases is, that you shoud always stop your database server before you make a backup or you will risk data loss. To prevent this a proper backup command for your database should be used.

Of course you could just create a cron job on your host with something like sqlite3 "$VW_DATABASE_URL" ".backup '$BACKUP_FILE_DB'" and back up the additional files and folders (like the attachments folder), using your preferred backup solution.

However on some systems you are not able to add cronjobs by yourself, for example common NAS venderos don't allow this. That's why this image exists. Additionally it also includes the most important files and puts them in a tar.xz archive from where on your regular backup software could handle this files.

Which files are included in the backup?

By default all files that are recommended to backup by the official Vaultwarden wiki https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Backing-up-your-vault are backed up per default. You can modify this behavior with environment variables.

Usage

Since version v0.0.7 you can always use the latest tag, since the image is build with multi-arch support. Of course you can always use the version tags vx.y.z to stick to a specific version. Note however that there will be no security updates for the alpine base image if you stick to a version.

Make sure that your vaultwarden container is named vaultwarden otherwise you have to replace the container name in the --volumes-from section of the docker run call.

Automatic Backups

A cron daemon is running inside the container and the container keeps running in background.

The easiest way to use this is by adjusting the docker-compose.yml to your needs. Below you find some example commands using docker run

Start backup container with default settings (automatic backup at 5 am)

docker run -d --restart=always --name vaultwarden-backup --volumes-from=vaultwarden bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup

Example for hourly backups

docker run -d --restart=always --name vaultwarden-backup --volumes-from=vaultwarden -e CRON_TIME="0 * * * *" bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup

Example for backups that delete after 30 days

docker run -d --restart=always --name vaultwarden --volumes-from=vaultwarden -e TIMESTAMP=true -e DELETE_AFTER=30 bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup

Manual Backups

You can use the crontab of your host to schedule the backup and the container will only be running during the backup process.

docker run --rm --volumes-from=vaultwarden bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup manual

If you want the backed up file to be stored outside the container you have to mount a directory by adding -v <PATH_ON_YOUR_HOST>:<PATH_INSIDE_CONTAINER>. The complete command could look like this

docker run --rm --volumes-from=vaultwarden -e UID=0 -e BACKUP_DIR=/myBackup -e TIMESTAMP=true -v $(pwd)/myBackup:/myBackup bruceforce/vaultwarden-backup manual

Keep in mind that the commands will be executed inside the container. So $BACKUP_DIR can be any place inside the container. Easiest would be to set it to /data/backup which will create the backup next to the original database file.

Encryption/Decryption

The backup tar.xz archive can be optionally encrypted. This can be useful if you keep sensitive attachments like ssh-keys in your vault and save the backup in an untrusted location.

Since we use the tar command, because its most common on Linux systems and tar offers no encryption flag on its own, gpg is used to encrypt the tar.xz archive. There are two different ways to enable encryption of the backup: symmetric and asymmetric. You can only choose one of these two. If you set environment variables for both only asymmetric encryption will be performed.

Encryption via passphrase (symmetric)

The easiest way to encrypt the backup is by using symmetric encryption with a passphrase. This can be done by setting ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD=<YourPassword> in the environment variables. However in some uses cases it might not be useful to store a passphrase as environment variable. In this cases you can encrypt the backup with your gpg public key.

Encryption via gpg public key (asymmetric)

Another way to encrypt the backup is by using a gpg public key. The public key needs to be provided as base64 string without line breaks. On most systems this can be achieved by base64 -w 0 PathToYourPublicKey.asc. After that set the environment variable ENCRYPTION_BASE64_GPG_KEY to your base64 encoded gpg public key.

Decryption

To decrypt the file you need to run gpg --decrypt backup.tar.xz.gpg > backup.tar.xz. This works for both encryption options. If you use gpg public key for encryption you must import your gpg keypair to your local keychain before this command works. For symmetric encryption this command just asks for your passphrase.

Restore

There is no automated restore process to prevent accidential data loss. So if you need to restore a backup you need to do this manually by following the steps below (assuming your backups are located at ./backup/ and your vaultwarden data ist located at /var/lib/docker/volumes/vaultwarden/_data/)

# Delete any existing sqlite3 files
rm /var/lib/docker/volumes/vaultwarden/_data/db.sqlite3*

# Extract the archive
# You may need to install xz first
tar -xJvf ./backup/data.tar.xz -C /var/lib/docker/volumes/vaultwarden/_data/

Environment variables

For default values see src/opt/scripts/set-env.sh

ENV Description
APP_DIR App dir inside the container (should not be changed)
APP_DIR_PERMISSIONS Permissions of app dir inside container (should not be changed)
BACKUP_ADD_DATABASE 1 Set to true to include the database itself in the backup
BACKUP_ADD_ATTACHMENTS 1 Set to true to include the attachments folder in the backup
BACKUP_ADD_CONFIG_JSON 1 Set to true to include config.json in the backup
BACKUP_ADD_ICON_CACHE 1 Set to true to include the icon cache folder in the backup
BACKUP_ADD_RSA_KEY 1 Set to true to include the RSA keys in the backup
BACKUP_ADD_SENDS 1 Set to true to include the sends folder in the backup
BACKUP_DIR Seths the path of the backup folder inside the container
BACKUP_DIR_PERMISSIONS Sets the permissions of the backup folder (CAUTION 2). Set to -1 to disable.
BACKUP_ON_STARTUP Creates a backup right after container startup
CRONFILE Path to the cron file inside the container
CRON_TIME Cronjob format "Minute Hour Day_of_month Month_of_year Day_of_week Year"
DELETE_AFTER Delete old backups after X many days. Set to 0 to disable
ENCRYPTION_ALGORITHM 3 Set the symmetric encryption algorithm (only used with ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD)
ENCRYPTION_BASE64_GPG_KEY BASE64 encoded gpg public key. Set to false to disable.
ENCRYPTION_GPG_KEYFILE_LOCATION File path of the gpg public key inside the container (should not be changed)
ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD Encryption password for symmetric encryption. Set to false to disable.
TIMESTAMP Set to true to append timestamp to the backup file
GID Group ID to run the cron job with
GNUPGHOME GNUPG home folder inside the container (should not be changed)
GNUPGHOME_PERMISSIONS Permissions of the GNUPGHOME folder (should not be changed)
HEALTHCHECK_URL Set a healthcheck url like https://hc-ping.com/xyz
HEALTHCHECK_FILE Set the path of the local healtcheck (container health) file
HEALTHCHECK_FILE_PERMISSIONS Set the permissions of the local healtcheck (container health) file
LOG_LEVEL DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL are supported
LOG_DIR Path to the logfile folder inside the container
LOG_DIR_PERMISSIONS Set the permissions of the logfile folder. Set to -1 to disable.
TZ Set the timezone inside the container 4
UID User ID to run the cron job with
VW_DATA_FOLDER 5 Set the location of the vaultwarden data folder inside the container
VW_DATABASE_URL 5 Set the location of the vaultwarden database file inside the container
VW_ATTACHMENTS_FOLDER 5 Set the location of the vaultwarden attachments folder inside the container
VW_ICON_CACHE_FOLDER 5 Set the location of the vaultwarden icon cache folder inside the container

FAQ

I get an error like "unable to open database file"

Error: unable to open database file is most likely caused by permission errors. Note that sqlite3 creates a lock file in the source directory while running the backup. So source AND destination have to be +rw for the user. You can set the user and group ID via the UID and GID environment variables like described above.

Database is locked

Error: database is locked is most likely caused by choosing a backup location that is not on the same filesystem as the vaultwarden database (like a network filesystem).

Vaultwarden, when started with default settings, uses WAL (write-ahed logging). You can verify this by looking for a db.sqlite3-wal file in the same folder as your original database file. According to the official SQLite docs WAL will cause issues in network share scenarios (see https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html):

All processes using a database must be on the same host computer; WAL does not work over a network filesystem.

Basically there are two workarounds for this issue

  1. Choose a local target for your backup and then use some other tool like cp or rsync to copy the backup file to your network filesystem.
  2. Disable WAL in Vaultwarden. You can find a guide here (https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Running-without-WAL-enabled).

Date Time issues / Wrong timestamp

If you need timestamps in your local timezone you should mount /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro and /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro like it's done in the docker-compose.yml. An other possible solution is to set the environment variable accordingly (like TZ=Europe/Berlin) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones for more information).

Attention if you are on an ARM based platform please note that alpine is used as base image for this project to keep things small. Since alpine 3.13 and above it's possible that you will end up with a container with broken time and date settings (i.e. year 1900). This is a known problem in the alpine project (see Github issue and solution) and there is nothing I can do about it. However in the alpine wiki a solution is being proposed which I also tested tested on my raspberry pi. After following the described process it started working again as expected. If you still experience issues or could for some reason not apply the aforementioned fixes please feel free to open an issue.

Why is the container started by the root user?

The main reason to build this image was to allow users to run sheduled tasks where their host OS does not allow them to do so, or where they want a "portable" way of using a scheduled tasks without relying on host OS mechanisms.

Since crond must be run as root user there is no way to start this container as a non-root user while using cron. I'm aware that there are other task schedulers like supercronic which allow to run without root privileges but I want to stay with the standard and established cron system for the time being.

Why sh is used instead of bash

Alpine by default comes without bash installed. Since the pre-installed ash shell is suitable for the tasks of this image and comes with no need to install additional tools like bash, /bin/sh is used as shell. The scripts also aims to be POSIX compliant which should make a switch of the base image fairly easy, if needed.

Footnotes

  1. See https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Backing-up-your-vault for more details ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. The permissions should at least be 700 since the backup folder itself gets the same permissions and with 600 it would not be accessible. ↩

  3. See gpg --version for possible options. ↩

  4. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones for more information ↩

  5. See https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Changing-persistent-data-location for more details ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4