Restoring from daily backups

On a daily basis, Confluence back ups your data and configuration information into a zipped XML file. You can find these daily backups in the backups folder inside your Confluence home directory.

You can restore this backup file from two places:

Restoring it from the Confluence setup wizard
Backup files are typically restored into a new instance of Confluence. When going through the setup wizard, remember to select Custom install. Now setup your database details for your choice of database. Once that is done, you will be asked if you want to set up a:

• empty instance
• an instance with a demonstration space
• restore from backup

Select the last option. Under where it says Upload a zipped backup to Confluence, browse for the relevant daily backup file. If you have:

• a very large daily backup file (say greater than 100MB) OR
• a daily backup file that is already on the server and doesn't require uploading

You can copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence home folder and then refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear in the box underneath the heading Restore a backup from the filesystem. Select and submit to commence the restore process.

Restoring it from the Confluence Administration Page
The first place is from the Administration > Backup & Restore page. Under where it says Upload a zipped backup to Confluence, browse for the relevant daily backup file. If you have:

• a very large daily backup file (say greater than 100MB) OR
• a daily backup file that is already on the server and doesn't require uploading

You can copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence home folder and then refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear in the box underneath the heading Restore a backup from the filesystem. Select and submit to commence the restore process.

Restoring from database backups and a backup of your confluence home directory

If your daily backup zips cannot be restored for whatever reason, but you have both a database backup and backups of your confluence home diretory, then it is still possible to restore from these.

If you're using an external database, you need to first build up a working database from one of your database backups (if you haven't got one running already). If this database happens to have a different name, or is on a different server, you can modify the jdbc url in the confluence.cfg.xml file inside the confluence home directory (Beside the hibernate.connection.url property). Now set the confluence.home property in the confluence-init.properties file in your Confluence webapp to this home directory and you should be up and running.