Backups

The repo ships a backup script that snapshots saves and config to a timestamped tarball with retention.

Manual backup

./windrose backup

Output goes to ./backups/windrose-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM.tar.gz. By default, archives older than 14 days are deleted automatically.

Override retention or location with environment variables:

BACKUP_DIR=/srv/backups RETENTION_DAYS=30 ./windrose backup

Scheduled backups

Backup every six hours:

0 */6 * * * cd /opt/windrose-dedicated-server && ./windrose backup >> logs/backup.log 2>&1

What gets backed up

• data/R5/Saved/ (world saves and player data)
• data/R5/ServerDescription.json (server config snapshot)

The image and SteamCMD cache are intentionally excluded since they are reproducible.

Restore

./windrose restore ./backups/windrose-2026-04-26-2200.tar.gz

The script stops the container, extracts the archive over the current files, and restarts. Always restore to the same project directory the backup was taken from.

Off-host backups

For real disaster recovery, push tarballs off the server. Examples:

S3-compatible (MinIO, AWS, Backblaze B2) using the AWS CLI:

aws s3 cp ./backups/ s3://my-bucket/windrose/ --recursive --exclude "*" --include "windrose-*.tar.gz"

Restic to any backend:

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/windrose backup ./data/R5/Saved

Borg, rclone, or rsync to a remote host all work. Wire any of these into a cron entry that runs after ./windrose backup.