Backup/Restore

System → Backup/Restore creates backups of the complete configuration, restores them on the same or on another system, and migrates the configuration of an old AskoziaPBX.

Make a backup before larger changes and before every update, and keep a copy outside the system: backups are stored on the data partition and are erased by a factory reset.

What a backup contains

A backup is a single file phonix-backup-YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS.tar.zst. It contains:

• the complete configuration: all settings, phones, providers, call groups, conference rooms, applications, IVR menus, business hours, manager users, and the web users with their API tokens,
• all secrets of that configuration: SIP and IAX passwords, voicemail PINs, manager secrets, the e-mail password, and the password hashes of the web users,
• the media files (music on hold, announcements),
• the TLS certificate with its private key and the ACME account.

A backup contains passwords and private keys. Store downloaded backups as carefully as the system itself.

Not included are:

• voicemail messages,
• the Asterisk database (runtime state such as call forwarding set from the phones),
• the call detail records (CDR), the audit log and the system logs,
• the SSH host keys, your SSH keys in /data/ssh/authorized_keys and the machine-specific keys of the system.

The configuration is stored as a versioned document, not as a copy of the database. A backup can therefore be restored on a newer PhonixPBX release. A backup made by a newer release than the running one is refused.

Backups

The Backups card lists the backups stored on the system, newest first, with their size.

The search field above the list finds backups by file name; how searching and paging work is described in Lists.

• Create backup saves a backup of the current state right away.
• The restore icon opens the restore preview for that backup.
• The download icon downloads the file to your computer.
• The delete icon removes the backup from the system.

PhonixPBX keeps the 10 newest backups and deletes older ones automatically. This includes the backups that are created automatically: before every restore, before an AskoziaPBX import in Replace mode, and before a container update. Download the backups you want to keep for longer.

Backups can also be created on the command line with phonix backup create (see Command line).

Restoring a backup

1. Under Restore, drop a backup file (.tar.zst, at most 2 GiB) onto the upload field or click it to choose a file. For a backup stored on the system, click its restore icon in the list instead.
2. The backup is checked completely and a preview is shown: when and by which PhonixPBX version it was made, how many objects of each kind it contains, and whether it contains a TLS certificate and an ACME account. Nothing has changed so far.
3. Choose which parts of the current system to keep (see below).
4. Click Restore and confirm.

PhonixPBX then saves a backup of the current state (the safety backup), replaces the configuration and the media files, and applies everything right away; there is no separate apply step. The browser reloads the dashboard. If the web users were restored from the backup, log in again with a user and password from the backup.

If anything in the backup is invalid, the restore stops before changing anything. If applying the restored configuration fails, the configuration is restored nonetheless and the error is shown; fix the cause and apply again.

An uploaded file that you do not restore is deleted after 24 hours.

Parts to keep

Everything else, including the media files, is always replaced by the content of the backup.

Legacy AskoziaPBX

The Legacy AskoziaPBX card migrates the configuration of an AskoziaPBX 2.x system. More details on what is converted are in AskoziaPBX migration.

Import config.xml

1. Download config.xml from the AskoziaPBX (its backup function), then drop it onto the upload field (at most 10 MB).
2. A preview shows, per section, how many objects are created, updated or skipped, the sections that are not supported and are dropped (analog and ISDN hardware, for example), and a list of warnings and errors per object. Nothing has changed so far.
3. If there are no errors, choose the Mode:
   • Replace current configuration (backup first): removes the current phones, providers and so on and imports the file. A backup of the current state is created first.
   • Merge into current configuration: adds the objects of the file to the current configuration. Objects that already exist are matched and updated; on a conflict (an extension that is already used, for example) the object is skipped and reported.
4. Click Import and confirm.

The import is not applied automatically. Review the imported configuration, then apply the pending changes (see Applying changes).

Export config.xml

Export config.xml downloads the current configuration in the AskoziaPBX format, for example to go back to an AskoziaPBX system. The export is best effort: features that AskoziaPBX does not have, such as IVR menus, business hours, TLS/SRTP and several web users, are left out.

The exported config.xml contains all passwords in plain text, as the old format requires. Every export is recorded in the audit log.