Backup List Tool

The lsbackup command-line tool prints information about the stored backups in a user-defined location.

Parameters

The lsbackup command supports the following flags:

Flags:
  -h, --help                    help for lsbackup
  -l, --location string         Sets the source location URI (required).
      --verbose                 Outputs additional info in backup list.
      --since-date string       Only list backups taken on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD or RFC 3339).
      --until-date string       Only list backups taken on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD or RFC 3339).
      --last-n-days int         Only list backups from the last N calendar days. Cannot be combined with --since-date.
      --summary                 Print a summary block after the backup listing.

• --location: indicates a source URI with Dgraph backup objects. This URI supports all the schemes used for backup.
• --verbose: if enabled will print additional information about the selected backup, including predicate groups and DROP operations. Reads the full manifest.json instead of the lightweight summary.
• --since-date: filters results to backups taken on or after the given date. Accepts YYYY-MM-DD (interpreted as start of that day UTC) or RFC 3339 (e.g. 2024-06-15T08:00:00Z).
• --until-date: filters results to backups taken on or before the given date. Accepts YYYY-MM-DD (interpreted as end of that day UTC, i.e. 23:59:59.999) or RFC 3339.
• --last-n-days: shorthand for --since-date set to N calendar days ago at midnight UTC. Cannot be combined with --since-date.
• --summary: prints a human-readable summary block to stderr after the JSON output (total count, oldest/newest backup, last full/incremental).

For example, you can execute the lsbackup command as follows:

dgraph lsbackup -l <source-location-URI>

Source URI

Source URI formats:

• [scheme]://[host]/[path]?[args]
• [scheme]:///[path]?[args]
• /[path]?[args] (only for local or NFS)

Source URI parts:

• scheme: service handler, one of: s3, minio, file
• host: remote address; e.g.: dgraph.s3.amazonaws.com
• path: directory, bucket or container at target; e.g.: /dgraph/backups/
• args: specific arguments that are ok to appear in logs

Output

The following snippet is an example output of lsbackup:

[
	{
		"path": "/home/user/Dgraph/20.11/backup/manifest.json",
		"since": 30005,
		"backup_id": "reverent_vaughan0",
		"backup_num": 1,
		"encrypted": false,
		"type": "full"
	},
]

If the --verbose flag was enabled, the output would look like this:

[
    {
        "path": "/home/user/Dgraph/20.11/backup/manifest.json",
        "since": 30005,
        "backup_id": "reverent_vaughan0",
        "backup_num": 1,
        "encrypted": false,
        "type": "full",
        "groups": {
            "1": [
                "dgraph.graphql.schema_created_at",
                "dgraph.graphql.xid",
                "dgraph.drop.op",
                "dgraph.type",
                "dgraph.cors",
                "dgraph.graphql.schema_history",
                "score",
                "dgraph.graphql.p_query",
                "dgraph.graphql.schema",
                "dgraph.graphql.p_sha256hash",
                "series"
            ]
        }
    },
]

Return values

• path: Name of the backup

• since: is the timestamp at which this backup was taken. It's called Since because it will become the timestamp from which to backup in the next incremental backup.

• groups: is the map of valid groups to predicates at the time the backup was created. This is printed only if --verbose flag is enabled

• encrypted: Indicates whether this backup is encrypted or not

• type: Indicates whether this backup is a full or incremental one

• drop_operation: lists the various DROP operations that took place since the last backup. These are used during restore to redo those operations before applying the backup. (This is printed only if --verbose flag is enabled)

• backup_num: is a monotonically increasing number assigned to each backup in a series. The full backup as BackupNum equal to one and each incremental backup gets assigned the next available number. This can be used to verify the integrity of the data during a restore.

• backup_id: is a unique ID assigned to all the backups in the same series.

Date Filtering

Both --since-date / --until-date and --last-n-days can be used to narrow results to a specific time window.

• YYYY-MM-DD dates are inclusive: --until-date 2024-06-15 captures all backups taken any time on 15 June.
• --last-n-days 7 is equivalent to setting --since-date to 7 days ago at midnight UTC.
• --last-n-days and --since-date are mutually exclusive.

# Last 7 days
dgraph lsbackup -l /data/backups --last-n-days 7

# A specific month with a summary
dgraph lsbackup -l /data/backups --since-date 2024-03-01 --until-date 2024-03-31 --summary

# Backups before a specific incident time
dgraph lsbackup -l /data/backups --until-date "2024-06-15T13:59:59Z"

Performance Note

By default, lsbackup reads manifest_summary.json — a lightweight file that omits predicate groups and DROP operations. On clusters with large vector schemas, manifest.json can exceed 500 MB; the summary keeps listing fast regardless of cluster size.

Use --verbose only when you need predicate-level detail, such as when diagnosing a restore or auditing schema changes.

Examples

S3

Checking information about backups stored in an AWS S3 bucket:

dgraph lsbackup -l s3:///s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/dgraph_backup

You might need to set up access and secret key environment variables in the shell (or session) you are going to run the lsbackup command. For example:

AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<paste-your-secret-access-key>
AWS_ACCESS_ID=<paste-your-key-id>

MinIO

Checking information about backups stored in a MinIO bucket:

dgraph lsbackup -l minio://localhost:9000/dgraph_backup

In case the MinIO server is started without tls, you must specify that secure=false as it set to true by default. You also need to set the environment variables for the access key and secret key.

In order to get the lsbackup running, you should following these steps:

• Set MINIO_ACCESS_KEY as an environment variable for the running shell this can be done with the following command: (minioadmin is the default access key, unless is changed by the user)

  export MINIO_ACCESS_KEY=minioadmin

• Set MINIO_SECRET_KEY as an environment variable for the running shell this can be done with the following command: (minioadmin is the default secret key, unless is changed by the user)

  export MINIO_SECRET_KEY=minioadmin

• Add the argument secure=false to the lsbackup command, that means the command will look like: (the double quotes " are required)

  dgraph lsbackup -l "minio://localhost:9000/<bucket-name>?secure=false"

Local

Checking information about backups stored locally (on disk):

dgraph lsbackup -l ~/dgraph_backup