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Backups and restore

The recommended way to back up, restore or migrate your data is the built-in export/import feature, whatever your installation mode.

Built-in export / import (recommended)​

In Settings → Data backup, first choose the Scope:

  • "Full backup (everything)" — the whole instance: game systems, worlds, campaigns, playthroughs and images;
  • or a specific campaign — a targeted export, to share or archive a single campaign.

For a campaign export, three "Include" checkboxes (all checked by default):

  • Lore (world) — the full linked world (pages, folders, templates);
  • Play space (playthroughs, sessions, characters) — the playthroughs with their sessions and journals, the facts, the quest progression and the character sheets;
  • Images — the binaries of the referenced images.

Then two buttons:

  • Export data — produces a portable .zip file (loremind-<name>.zip).
  • Import a file — reloads a .zip (file picker or drag & drop) in merge mode: the content is added to the existing data without overwriting anything. A confirmation reminds you: "Its content will be added to your instance (nothing is deleted)."

This is the preferred path to back up your work or transfer it to another installation.

note
  • The built-in backup/restore is disabled in demo mode.
  • Maximum size of an imported file: 2 GB on the desktop installation, 128 MB by default on Docker (configurable server-side).
  • Exports created with previous versions of DM Loremind can still be imported — missing sections (e.g. the play space) are simply treated as empty.

For details about the export file format, see Export.

Where does your data live?​

The location depends on your installation mode:

  • Desktop installation (local-first) — local H2 + files database. This is exactly the case where the built-in .zip export is the right path: it gathers everything into a single portable file.
  • Docker deployment — data in PostgreSQL (campaigns, lore, sheets, image references) and image binaries on the file system.

Advanced option (Docker only)​

If you run a Docker deployment and want a database-level backup, you can use pg_dump. This procedure does not apply to the desktop installation.

PostgreSQL data​

docker compose exec db pg_dump -U loremind loremind > loremind-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

Uploaded images​

Images live in the Docker volume loremind_images (depending on your docker-compose). Copy them at the same time as the SQL dump to stay consistent:

docker run --rm -v loremind_images:/source -v $(pwd):/backup alpine \
    tar czf /backup/images-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz -C /source .

Restore​

# Restore the database
docker compose exec -T db psql -U loremind loremind < loremind-20260101.sql

# Restore the images
docker run --rm -v loremind_images:/dest -v $(pwd):/backup alpine \
    tar xzf /backup/images-20260101.tar.gz -C /dest

Then restart the stack: docker compose restart.

Automation (Docker)​

To automate, two options on the Docker side:

  1. Cron on the host — a backup.sh script that dumps SQL + tars images, plus a retention policy
  2. Third-party service — Restic, Borg, or Duplicati pointing at the Docker volumes

Best practices​

  • Back up before every major update (release 0.X.0 → 0.Y.0)
  • Quarterly restore test — an untested backup is a fake backup
  • Off-site it — copy backups off the DM Loremind machine (NAS, encrypted cloud)