Automatic backup script

The biggest issues for users happen when data files are lost or corrupted, leading to missing or borked trades, or unrecoverable Delayed Payout Transactions.

Having an automated backup solution helps covering that risk, by removing the need to manually run a backup after every application state change (mainly "offer created", "trade started", "trade completed").

Issues could still happen when a critical event occurs right after a state change was saved to disk, and before an automated backup was taken, but there are strategies to mitigate that possibility, which will be discussed.

Bisq1

Linux

This script requires p7zip-full to be installed, use sudo apt install p7zip-full in debian derivatives if needed.

Create a scripts folder in your home directory, prepare an executable file and open it with an editor:

cd ~
mkdir scripts
cd scripts
touch bisq1backup
chmod +x bisq1backup
nano bisq1backup

the following code, that you need to paste in the file and edit where needed, will backup all functional files in the data directory, leaving out non-unique files that the Bisq application will fetch autonomously, and compress them into a 7zip archive, keeping the last N amount of backups that you define (default is 4), while deleting the oldest one if the existing number of backups is higher.

It is advised that you direct the backups to either an external drive, or a NAS, or an encrypted cloud storage.

#!/bin/bash

SOURCE_DIR="/home/YOURUSERNAME/local/share/Bisq/btc_mainnet"
TARGET_FOLDER="/mnt/BACKUPS/BISQ1"
BACKUP_COUNT=4
ARCHIVE_ROOT="bisq1_backup_"
BACKUP_FILE="${ARCHIVE_ROOT}$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).7z"
ARCHIVE_PATH="${TARGET_FOLDER}/${BACKUP_FILE}"
SELECTED_FILES=(
"BsqSwapTrades"
"BallotList"
"DisputeList"
"RefundDisputeList"
"SequenceNumberMap"
"MyVoteList"
"OpenOffers"
"MyBlindVoteList"
"ClosedTrades"
"MediationDisputeList"
"MyProposalList"
"MailboxMessageList"
"AccountAgeWitnessStore"
"PendingTrades"
"MyProofOfBurnList"
"PreferencesPayload"
"UserPayload"
"AddressEntryList"
"FailedTrades"
"MyReputationList"
"TempProposalStore"
"NavigationPath"
"UnconfirmedBsqChangeOutputList"
"IgnoredMailboxMap"
"PeerList"
"RemovedPayloadsMap"
"TradeStatistics3Store"
"SignedWitnessStore"
)

FOLDER_KEYS="keys"
FOLDER_WALLET="wallet"
FOLDER_TOR="tor/hiddenservice"

FILE_LIST=$(mktemp)

SUBFOLDER_DB_PATH="$SOURCE_DIR/db"
for file in "${SELECTED_FILES[@]}"; do
  if [ -f "$SUBFOLDER_DB_PATH/$file" ]; then
    echo "$SUBFOLDER_DB_PATH/$file" >> "$FILE_LIST"
  fi
done

for subfolder in "$FOLDER_KEYS" "$FOLDER_WALLET"; do
  find "$SOURCE_DIR/$subfolder" -maxdepth 1 -type f >> "$FILE_LIST"
done

FOLDER_TOR_PATH="$SOURCE_DIR/$FOLDER_TOR"
if [ -d "$FOLDER_TOR_PATH" ]; then
  find "$FOLDER_TOR_PATH" -type f >> "$FILE_LIST"
fi

7z a -t7z -mx=9 -m0=lzma2 -mmt=on -spf "$ARCHIVE_PATH" @"$FILE_LIST"

rm "$FILE_LIST"

echo "Backup completed: $BACKUP_FILE"

ARCHIVE_COUNT=$(find "${TARGET_FOLDER}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "${ARCHIVE_ROOT}*.7z" | wc -l)

if [ "${ARCHIVE_COUNT}" -gt "${BACKUP_COUNT}" ]; then
  echo "found ${ARCHIVE_COUNT} backups, removing oldest one(s)"
  find "${TARGET_FOLDER}" -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "${ARCHIVE_ROOT}*.7z" | sort -r | tail -n +"${BACKUP_COUNT}" | xargs -I {} rm -f {}
fi

Lastly, edit the system crontab with crontab -e (in Debian derivatives), and add the following line to have a backup taken every 8 hours:

0 */8 * * * /home/YOURUSERNAME/scripts/bisq1backup > /tmp/bisq1backup.log

depending on how bulletproof of a backup strategy you want, you can increase the number of backups to keep on disk (the size of each depends on the history of your instance, but it usually resides in less than a few tens of MB) and the frequency the script runs, for example every 1 or 2 hours.