Backups

Mitra keeps everything in one folder: /app/data inside the container, which is ~/mitra on the host if you followed Getting started. Back up that folder and you’ve backed up the whole instance. There’s no database server to dump and no config files to pick out.

CAUTION

For some of what you keep in Mitra, this folder is the only copy. Every entry in a Mitra calendar lives here and nowhere else. So do your accounts and sign-in sessions, the credentials of connected accounts, your settings, your calendars’ colors, order and names, your availability, your task order, some links between entries, and the key your devices’ reminders depend on. If you lose the folder, a provider can give you back its events and tasks, but nothing else.

Back up

Point whatever you already use at the folder: restic, Borg, rsync, a filesystem or VM snapshot, or a plain archive.

The safest copy is one taken while Mitra is stopped:

docker compose stop mitra
restic backup ~/mitra        # or: tar czf mitra-backup.tar.gz -C ~/mitra .
docker compose start mitra

If you can’t stop it, copying the folder while Mitra runs is usually fine, as SQLite copes well with it. A filesystem or VM snapshot gives you a consistent copy without stopping anything.

Restore

Stop Mitra, put the folder back, and start it again:

docker compose stop mitra
restic restore latest --target ~/mitra        # or extract your archive there
docker compose start mitra

Restore the folder as a whole. Its files belong together, and mixing files from different days can break the instance. A backup from an older version restores fine onto a newer image, since Mitra updates its database when it starts.

What a backup doesn’t cover

Events and tasks in connected accounts, such as a CalDAV server, Google Calendar or Notion, live with those providers. A backup includes Mitra’s copy of them, and after a restore Mitra syncs them again.

Your environment variables live in your compose.yaml or .env file, not in the data folder. Keep those safe as well, in version control or your secret store.