Restore¶

This guide covers restoring HomelabARR CE containers from backups created by backup.sh or manual archives.

Before You Start¶

Make sure you have:

• A working Docker installation
• The HomelabARR CE repo cloned
• Your .env file (or a backup copy of it)
• Your backup archives from /mnt/downloads/appbackups/local/

Restoring Appdata¶

Step 1: Stop Containers¶

# Stop all containers
docker stop $(docker ps -q)

# Or stop a specific app
docker stop sonarr

Step 2: Extract Backup Archives¶

The backup archives contain appdata directories. Extract them back to /opt/appdata:

# Restore a single app
tar xzf /mnt/downloads/appbackups/local/sonarr.tar.gz -C /opt/appdata

# Restore all apps
for archive in /mnt/downloads/appbackups/local/*.tar.gz; do
  tar xzf "$archive" -C /opt/appdata
done

Step 3: Fix Permissions¶

chown -R 1000:1000 /opt/appdata

This matches the default ID=1000 in the .env file. If you use a different UID/GID, adjust accordingly.

Restoring Environment Config¶

Copy your backed-up .env files into place:

cp .env.backup .env
cp apps/.config/.env.backup apps/.config/.env

If you don't have a backup of your .env, copy the example and reconfigure:

cp apps/.config/.env.example apps/.config/.env
# Edit with your settings: DOMAIN, CLOUDFLARE_EMAIL, TZ, etc.

Restoring Traefik and Authelia¶

Traefik¶

# If you have a Traefik backup archive
tar xzf traefik-backup.tar.gz -C /

# Fix acme.json permissions (required by Traefik)
chmod 600 /opt/appdata/traefik/acme/acme.json

Authelia¶

tar xzf authelia-backup.tar.gz -C /

Key files to verify after restore:

• /opt/appdata/authelia/configuration.yml — must reference your domain
• /opt/appdata/authelia/users_database.yml — contains user accounts

If users_database.yml is missing, Authelia won't have any users. You'll need to recreate it from the template in traefik/templates/authelia/users_database.yml and set new passwords.

Restoring Docker Volumes¶

If you backed up named Docker volumes:

# Recreate the volume
docker volume create volume_name

# Restore data into it
docker run --rm -v volume_name:/data -v /opt/backup:/backup alpine \
  sh -c "tar xzf /backup/volume_name.tar.gz -C /data"

Re-deploying Containers¶

After restoring data, redeploy your containers. They'll pick up the existing configs from /opt/appdata.

Full Mode (Traefik)¶

# Redeploy infrastructure first
./install.sh
# Select Option 1 (Traefik + Authelia)

# Then redeploy apps
./homelabarr-cli.sh
# Select each app to redeploy

Local Mode¶

./homelabarr-cli.sh
# Select apps to redeploy — they'll find their existing data in /opt/appdata

Post-Restore Checklist¶

After restoring, verify everything works:

# Check all containers are running
docker ps

# Check for containers in restart loops
docker ps -a --filter "status=restarting"

# Check logs for errors
docker logs sonarr 2>&1 | tail -20
docker logs radarr 2>&1 | tail -20
docker logs traefik 2>&1 | tail -20

Things to Verify¶

• All containers are running (docker ps)
• No containers in crash loops (docker ps -a --filter "status=restarting")
• Apps are accessible (via IP:port for Local Mode, via domain for Full Mode)
• Traefik dashboard loads at https://traefik.yourdomain.com (Full Mode)
• Authelia login works (Full Mode)
• Media libraries are intact in Plex/Jellyfin
• Download clients have their configs (categories, paths, connections)
• *arr apps have their indexers, download client connections, and media libraries

Support¶

Kindly report any issues/broken-parts/bugs on github or discord

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