Backups
What you need
Time: 20 minutes, and 30 more if you set up Google Drive
- You are signed in to the dashboard.
- For off-site copies: a Google Drive account, a NAS, or any SFTP, SMB or WebDAV space.
This is the most important page in these guides. A masjid computer can have its disk fail, be stolen, or be thrown away by somebody who did not know what it was.
What a backup contains
One file, holding everything:
- your settings, including your Stripe keys, your email password and your remote-access token
- every app's data — donors, students, invoices, prayer timetables, screens
Download one now
- Open Settings, then find Backup & restore.
- Click Download a backup.
- Save the file somewhere safe.
Your browser downloads one file. A masjid with a few apps and some donation history produces a file of a few megabytes to a few hundred.
Send backups off the machine automatically
A backup on the same computer does not survive that computer. Set up a destination and a schedule.
- In Backup & restore, find Off-site backups.
- Click Set up destination.
- Choose where backups go.
- Fill in the details, then click Test connection.
- When the test passes, click Save destination.
- Turn on Scheduled backups, choose Daily or Weekly, and set Backups to keep.
- Click Back up now to prove the whole thing works.
The status line reads Last backup, the date, and succeeded.
Four destinations are offered.
| Destination | Good for |
|---|---|
| Windows share (SMB) | A NAS or an office computer the masjid already has. |
| SFTP | A server, or a NAS that offers SFTP. |
| WebDAV | Nextcloud and similar. |
| Google Drive | A masjid with no NAS. It needs the extra steps below. |
Google Drive needs one extra step
Google does not let a device on a home or masjid network sign in to Drive on its own. You authorise it once from an ordinary computer using a free tool called rclone, then paste the result in.
- Choose Google Drive as the destination.
- On any normal computer, install rclone from the link the dashboard gives you.
- Open a terminal on that computer and run the command the dashboard shows.
- Sign in to Google in the browser window that opens.
- Copy the whole token line the command prints.
- Paste it into Google Drive token in the dashboard, then save.
Test connection reports Connected successfully.
Put a backup back
There are two ways, and the first is much better.
On a new machine. Install OpenMasjidOS, open the dashboard, and on the very first screen choose Restore from a backup instead of creating an account. Your account, settings and all app data come back. You do not create a new account.
On a machine already in use. Settings, then Backup & restore, then Restore.
Test a restore before you need it
Checkpoint
You have a backup file off the masjid computer, Scheduled backups is on, and the status line says the last backup succeeded.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Test connection fails on an SMB share. | Usually the share name or the username. | Enter the share name on its own, without slashes. For a Windows account, try the form COMPUTER\\user. |
| The last backup failed and names no destination. | The destination went away, or its password changed. | Open the destination, click Test connection, and re-enter the password. |
| Backups fill the destination. | Backups to keep is set too high for the space available. | Lower it, or use a larger destination. Old backups are removed once the limit is passed. |
| The download never starts. | A large backup takes a while to build before the browser sees anything. | Wait. If it fails, check Disk on the dashboard — building a backup needs free space. |