Rails Backup: Generating Backup Model not running with Dokku - ruby-on-rails

Question

Using Backup gem to do a DB backup, deployed the app with the gem installed to DigitalOcean and the next step is to run the generator using
dokku run oktob bundle exec backup generate:model --trigger oktob_db_backup --databases="postgresql" --storages="dropbox" --encryptors="openssl" --compressors="gzip" --notifiers="mail"
This should create the configuration files to setup the backup, but it returns nothing.
When I run the generator on my local machine, 2 files are generated as normal, but this time without using dokku run oktob as it's on a local machine.
Generated model file: '/Users/ahmadajmi/Backup/models/oktob_db_backup.rb'.
Generated configuration file: '/Users/ahmadajmi/Backup/config.rb'.
Thanks

Answer 1

To solve the problem, the backup gem should be installed outside the app container in the Linux machine.
Backup generator command is used to to generate the backup config file.
backup generate:model --trigger oktob_database_backup --databases="postgresql" --storages="s3" --compressor="gzip" --notifiers="mail"
Which will create the backup configuration file /root/Backup/models/oktob_database_backup.rb in the Linux machine and not related to Dokku, or app container, and this file contains some required configuration related to the database connection, S3 information, and email account to send notifications.
/root/Backup/models/oktob_database_backup.rb file contains:
# encoding: utf-8
##
# Backup Generated: oktob_db_backup
# Once configured, you can run the backup with the following command:
#
# $ backup perform -t oktob_db_backup [-c <path_to_configuration_file>]
#
# For more information about Backup's components, see the documentation at:
# http://backup.github.io/backup
#
Model.new(:oktob_database_backup, 'Oktob Production Database Backup') do
##
# PostgreSQL [Database]
#
database PostgreSQL do |db|
db.name = ENV['DATABASE_NAME']
db.username = ENV['DATABASE_USERNAME']
db.password = ENV['DATABASE_PASSWORD']
db.host = ENV['DATABASE_HOST']
db.port = ENV['DATABASE_PORT']
end
##
# Amazon Simple Storage Service [Storage]
#
store_with S3 do |s3|
# AWS Credentials
s3.access_key_id = ENV['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID']
s3.secret_access_key = ENV['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY']
s3.region = "us-west-2"
s3.bucket = ENV['AWS_DATABASE_BACKUP_BUCKET_NAME']
s3.path = "/"
end
##
# Gzip [Compressor]
#
compress_with Gzip
##
# Mail [Notifier]
#
# The default delivery method for Mail Notifiers is 'SMTP'.
# See the documentation for other delivery options.
#
notify_by Mail do |mail|
mail.on_success = true
mail.on_warning = true
mail.on_failure = true
mail.from = ENV['EMAIL_ADDRESS']
mail.to = ENV['EMAIL_ADDRESS']
mail.address = "smtp.gmail.com"
mail.port = 587
mail.domain = "oktob.io"
mail.user_name = ENV['SMTP_USERNAME']
mail.password = ENV['SMTP_PASSWORD']
mail.authentication = "plain"
mail.encryption = :starttls
end
end
The configurations are stored in /etc/environment file as:
## Database
export DATABASE_NAME=''
export DATABASE_USERNAME=''
export DATABASE_PASSWORD=''
export DATABASE_HOST=''
export DATABASE_PORT=''
## Amazon S3
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=''
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=''
export AWS_DATABASE_BACKUP_BUCKET_NAME=''
## Email
export EMAIL_ADDRESS=''
export SMTP_USERNAME=''
export SMTP_PASSWORD=''
To perform a backup manually we can do type backup perform -t oktob_database_backup, and this command will do 3 things:
Connect remotely to the Postgres Dokku container and make a database dump
Storing the abckup file into oktob-database-backup S3 bucket.
Send an email notification to EMAIL_ADDRESS
The backup is done every one hour using a cron job, this job added in crontab -e as:
0 * * * * /bin/bash -l -c '/usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p647/bin/backup perform -t oktob_database_backup'
We can get the /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p647/bin/backup part by typing which backup in the command line, to get the path.
Good articles to check:
Hourly Production Server Database And File Backups
Backup PostgreSQL from a Rails project to Amazon S3

Answer 2

This is a no-answer, but too long for a comment.
You will generally have the problem, that the newly created files are not persisted, because the dokku run stuff fires up a new container (which then directly reaches its end of life).
You can use the dokku-volume plugin to designate a directory that "lives" outside of your app-containers and keeps the files as-is.