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Persistence, backup and restore

What persists

Three bind mounts under ./data/ (git-ignored). A rebuild of the image, or a new image, loses nothing:

Host Container Contents
./data/home ~ config, mise toolchains, nvim plugins, pi/omp sessions, zsh history, SSH host keys, podman images
${PROJECTS_DIR:-./data/projets} ~/projets your repositories
./data/tailscale /var/lib/tailscale tailscaled state (node identity)

~/projets is a separate volume so it can be backed up, shared or pointed at another disk independently. Only its top-level directory is ever chowned, when Docker created it as root. Its contents are never touched. You can start from a fresh home (rm -rf data/home) without affecting your projects.

Backup

scripts/backup.sh [--with-tailscale] [dest_dir] writes dev-box-<TS_HOSTNAME>-<YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS>.tar.zst into dest_dir, ./backups by default (git-ignored). It needs zstd on the host. The setup script installs both scripts in the install directory too.

What goes in:

  • data/home, minus the caches that rebuild themselves: .cache, .local/share/{mise,nvim,dotarchy,lazyvim-starter}, .local/state/nvim, .npm, .bun, and .local/share/containers, the podman image store, which is bulky, re-pullable, and full of files owned by mapped UIDs.
  • The projects directory (PROJECTS_DIR), minus every node_modules. .git/objects is kept, so your repositories come back whole, with their history.
  • A copy of .env and compose.override.yaml when they exist. .env holds TS_AUTHKEY and GITHUB_TOKEN, so treat the archive as a secret.

What stays out: data/tailscale. It holds the node identity, and restoring it elsewhere would give you two machines claiming the same one. Pass --with-tailscale if you really want it in the archive.

Ownership is preserved (--numeric-owner), and sudo is used only when something that goes into the archive is not readable as you. The archive is read back end to end after being written, and its entry count and size are printed.

Restore

./scripts/restore.sh backups/dev-box-dev-box-20260920-101500.tar.zst

It stops the container, lists what already exists and would be overwritten, asks for confirmation, then unpacks at the root of the repo. Files are overwritten one by one. Nothing outside the archive is ever deleted, so a home restored over a newer one keeps whatever the archive does not mention. Add --yes to skip the prompt. Outside a terminal the script refuses to run without it. Then bring the box back with docker compose up -d. The mise toolchains were not in the archive, so the start reinstalls them, or you run devbox update tools from inside.

If PROJECTS_DIR points outside the repo, on another disk, the projects are stored under projets-external/ in the archive and restored there. Move them back yourself, the script will not write outside the repo.