Moving a step-ca docker container

[davidwuest]

I need to move a working docker step-ca installation to a new server. Has someone done this without doing an init? Is there tutorial?

[maraino]

I cannot think of any tutorial, but here are the steps. Let's say that you have one step-ca automatically initialize:

docker run --name step-ca -it -e DOCKER_STEPCA_INIT_NAME=ACME -e DOCKER_STEPCA_INIT_DNS_NAMES=localhost smallstep/step-ca

Now we can copy /home/step to a backup directory:

$ mkdir backup
$ docker cp -a step-ca:/home/step backup
Successfully copied 18.9kB to /home/mariano/backup
$ ls backup
step
$ ls backup/step
certs     config    db        secrets   templates

We can start a new step-ca, it will automatically stop because we are not going to provide the environment variables:

docker run --name new-step-ca smallstep/step-ca

Now we can just copy the files and start the server:

$ for i in backup/step/*; do docker cp -a $i new-step-ca:/home/step; done
Successfully copied 4.61kB to new-step-ca:/home/step
Successfully copied 5.12kB to new-step-ca:/home/step
Successfully copied 8.7kB to new-step-ca:/home/step
Successfully copied 4.61kB to new-step-ca:/home/step
Successfully copied 1.54kB to new-step-ca:/home/step
$ docker start new-step-ca
$ docker logs new-step-ca
...
2023/11/30 02:49:01 Serving HTTPS on :9000 ...

[CoderMcDaniel]

@maraino Would this also be considered the proper way to perform routine backups of the step-ca server?