Back up, restore and erase

Your workshop lives with you, so the backups are yours too. Mallet makes one file that holds the whole workshop, and restores it into a fresh installation on any computer.

What a backup holds

A backup holds your workshop records: assets, jobs, estimates and their frozen approvals, authorisations, recorded work, invoices and their saved CSVs, and the original files from any move-in. It leaves out sign-in identities, sessions, agent keys and private settings: the installation you restore into has its own owner and its own keys.

Keep backups private. They contain your customers' names and contact details.

Download a backup

The owner can download one at any time from Data & access: press Download workshop backup. You get workshop.rer. Your browser saves it outside the run-mallet folder, readable by other users. Before you can import it, move it into the folder's exports/ directory and make it private:

mkdir -p exports
mv ~/Downloads/workshop.rer exports/workshop.rer
chmod 600 exports/workshop.rer

Or, from the run-mallet folder, stop Mallet and export with rer:

rer dev --stop
rer export --output exports/workshop.rer

Restore on another computer

Restore goes into an empty installation, so nothing already there is overwritten.

1. On the new computer, get Mallet with the one line in Get started, npx -y @runeditrun/rer dev just-every/run-mallet.
2. That line starts Mallet: finish setup as the new owner, then stop it with rer dev --stop.
3. Import the backup and start again:

rer import --input exports/workshop.rer --yes
rer dev

rer import has two path rules. The file must be a regular file you own with mode 0600, or it stops with Input must be an owned regular private file (0600). Use paths inside the run-mallet folder, such as exports/workshop.rer, for --input and --journal: an absolute --journal, or any path containing .., stops with Path must be a contained checkout path without traversal, which does not say which argument it means.

Mallet refuses to import into an installation that already has workshop records. Moved-in records stay usable by the new owner, including their journals and undo.

Erase an unused asset

The owner can erase an asset that has never had a visit, for example one added by mistake or brought in by a move-in that a customer asked you to remove. Open the asset, type ERASE under Erase unused asset and press the button. Mallet removes the asset and the personal data imported with it.

An asset with visits keeps its service and financial history.

Backups made before an erasure

An older backup still contains what you erased, so Mallet will not restore it. After erasing, download a fresh backup and restore from that one: it holds everything the workshop kept, without the erased asset.

If you try the older backup with the later one as its erasure journal, the import stops and restores nothing:

rer import --input exports/older.rer --journal exports/after-erasure.rer --yes

It exits with code 4 and reports restore_refused with the reason erasure_epoch. That is the safeguard working. Importing the same older backup without --journal is accepted and would bring the erased data back, so keep only backups made after your latest erasure.