Backup & restore

Tether's data lives in one database. Backing up is straightforward and should happen automatically every day. This page covers backup and restore for all supported databases.

MariaDB — Docker

Backup

bashCopy
# While Tether is running, dump the database to a file
docker exec tether-db \
  mysqldump -u tether -ptether tether \
  > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M).sql

# Verify the backup file has content
wc -l backup-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M).sql
# Should show hundreds or thousands of lines, not 0

Restore

bashCopy
# Stop the app to prevent writes during restore
docker compose stop app

# Restore the dump
docker exec -i tether-db \
  mysql -u tether -ptether tether \
  < backup-20260531-0200.sql

# Start the app again
docker compose start app

MariaDB — bare-metal

bashCopy
# Backup
mysqldump -u tether -p tether > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql
# Enter your database password when prompted

# Restore
sudo systemctl stop tether
mysql -u tether -p tether < backup-20260531.sql
sudo systemctl start tether

PostgreSQL

bashCopy
# Backup (pg_dump creates a portable format)
pg_dump -U tether -Fc tether > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).dump

# Restore
sudo systemctl stop tether
pg_restore -U tether -d tether -c backup-20260531.dump
sudo systemctl start tether

SQLite

bashCopy
# SQLite is a single file — stop Tether before copying to avoid a partial read
sudo systemctl stop tether          # bare-metal
docker compose stop app             # Docker

# Backup
cp data/tether.db backups/tether-$(date +%Y%m%d).db

# Restart
sudo systemctl start tether
docker compose start app

# Restore
sudo systemctl stop tether
cp backups/tether-20260531.db data/tether.db
sudo systemctl start tether

Automated daily backups

Add a cron job to back up automatically. Example for MariaDB with Docker:

bashCopy
crontab -e

# Add these lines:
# Daily backup at 2:00 AM
0 2 * * * docker exec tether-db mysqldump -u tether -ptether tether > /var/backups/tether/tether-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

# Delete backups older than 30 days
0 3 * * * find /var/backups/tether -name "*.sql" -mtime +30 -delete

# Create the backup directory first:
mkdir -p /var/backups/tether

Offsite backup example (Backblaze B2)

bashCopy
# Install rclone
curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash

# Configure rclone with your B2 account
rclone config

# Add to crontab — sync backups to B2 after creating them
30 2 * * * rclone sync /var/backups/tether b2:your-bucket-name/tether-backups

Verifying backups

A backup you haven't tested is not a backup — it's a hope. Monthly, restore your latest backup to a test environment and verify:

• Tether starts without errors
• You can log in
• Asset data looks correct
• The asset count matches what you expect