Backing Up Kaya

Kaya's Backup Manager records and coordinates workload backups; it does not create a complete backup of the Kaya application itself.

What to back up

Back up the entire repository deployment directories:

• data/, including kaya.db, hidden .runtime.env, Secret Vault and Secure Send storage, recordings and migration backups;
• uploads/, including hardware asset files;
• docker-compose.yml, .env and any reverse-proxy configuration.

Create a cold backup

The safest simple method stops writes briefly:

cd /path/to/kaya
docker compose stop kaya secure-send-gateway
tar --create --gzip --file "kaya-backup-$(date +%F-%H%M%S).tar.gz" data uploads docker-compose.yml .env
docker compose start kaya secure-send-gateway

If .env does not exist, omit it from the command. Store the archive on a different system and protect it as sensitive data.

Verify the backup

List the archive and confirm the required paths exist:

tar --list --file kaya-backup-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.tar.gz | head -n 30

Periodically restore a copy to an isolated host and test sign-in, encrypted data and uploads. Secret Vault users should also keep tested .kayavault portable exports; those protect against loss of Kaya's application encryption key in a way that a database-only copy cannot.

See Restoring Kaya.