How-To-Request: Restoring from a backup (practice)

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Nextcloud version (eg, 20.0.5): 25.0.2
Operating system and version (eg, Ubuntu 20.04): Debian 11
Apache or nginx version (eg, Apache 2.4.25): 2.4.56-1~deb11u1
PHP version (eg, 7.4): 2:7.4+76
Purpose of installation: personal cloud (only one user)

I am trying to backup my Nextcloud instance and practice restoring it, so I know it will work. In the past, I’ve had database corruption during an upgrade and had to reinstall, so I am trying to get backup and restore sorted before upgrading again.

I’ve followed the backup directions in the manual and have backups of the database dump, the /var/nextcloud root web folder, and the data directory.

QUESTION: How do I practice restoring the backup?

My first thought is to spin up a VM, install Debian 11, install this version of nextcloud from scratch, and restore/copy the files to the locations they should be. Is there an easier way - how would you do it?

Then I would have to restore the database. It looks like this can get quite involved, but the MariaDB docs have a “clumsy way” here Restoring Data from Dump Files - MariaDB Knowledge Base

Is this the way to practice restoring a backup, so I can restore it in case the database gets corrupted again, or I need to recover for another reason?

Thanks,
T.MG.

If you’re curious, my backup script looks like this. I would not recommend copying it as I don’t know best practices, or side effects of what I’m doing.

My backup script
#!/bin/bash

echo "Did you make sure that backup_drive is turned on and mounted on raspi3deb?"
sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nc.example.com/occ maintenance:mode --on
#this automatically echos "Maintenance mode on"
mysqldump --single-transaction --user=nextcloud --password=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX --lock-tables --databases nextcloud > /var/www/nc.example.com/nextcloud-sqlbkp_`date +"%Y%m%d"`.bak
echo "mysql dump created"
# puts the dump in the web root dir so I don't lose it
restic --cacert=/root/keys/public_key --password-file /root/keys/ncpass -r 
# Backup to REST server on raspi3deb
rest:https://user:pass@192.168.1.100:8000/tmg/nc --verbose backup /media/ncdatadir/
restic --cacert=/root/keys/public_key -r rest:https://user:pass@192.168.1.100:8000/tmg/nc --password-file /root/keys/ncpass --verbose backup /var/www/nc.example.com/
sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nc.example.com/occ maintenance:mode --off
echo "Backup Complete. Check output for errors"

There is also a documentation. Install/restore all services e.g. apache2, MariaDB, copy files to the correct locations and restore database. Pay a little attention to when e.g. apache2/Nextcloud or CRON may be executed and when not.

Thanks! That will help a lot. Does the first part make sense: testing the backup restore process by installing Debian in a VM and then installing the same Nextcloud version there?

EDIT: I was not able to use a VM to practice restoring from a backup, since the architecture was not x86.

I copied my raspberry Pi’s SD card using dd, then I imaged a second SD card, and practiced restoring the backup on that one.