Disaster Recovery¶

If you destroy / cancel the droplet, you can restore the world to a new server using only:

The restic repo password (1 string)
The Google OAuth client_id + secret (2 strings)
Access to the Google account where backups live

These are tiny, fit in a password manager, and are the only critical secrets.

Step 0: Back these up to a password manager NOW¶

Item	Where it lives on droplet	Why you need it
Restic password	`/root/.restic-password`	Decrypts the snapshot repo on Drive
Google OAuth client ID	`/root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf` (`client_id` line)	rclone's identity for Drive API
Google OAuth client secret	`/root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf` (`client_secret` line)	Same

Grab them once:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/do_minecraft_claude root@<droplet-ip> \
  "cat /root/.restic-password; echo; grep -E 'client_id|client_secret' /root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf"

→ paste into Bitwarden / 1Password / iCloud Keychain / your password manager of choice. DO NOT commit them to git or any sync'd folder.

You do not need to back up the rclone OAuth token — it's short-lived and re-auth gives you a new one.

Step 1: Restore on a new machine (any Linux box with internet)¶

Install restic + rclone:

apt install -y restic
curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | bash

Configure rclone with your OAuth client:

rclone config
# n (new), name = gdrive, type = drive,
# paste client_id, paste client_secret, scope = 3 (drive.file),
# advanced = no, autoconfig = no
# copy the rclone authorize line, run it on a machine with a browser
# (https://rclone.org/drive/#headless), paste the token back

Set environment for restic:

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:gdrive:minecraft-backups
echo '<your-restic-password>' > /tmp/pw && chmod 600 /tmp/pw
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/tmp/pw

Confirm you can see snapshots:

restic snapshots

Restore the latest snapshot:

restic restore latest --target /tmp/restored

You now have the world folders under /tmp/restored/var/lib/pterodactyl/volumes/.../world/.

Step 2: Bring it back online¶

You have the world. Now you need a server to run it. Two options:

Option A — Rebuild the same setup on a new droplet Follow README.md + OPERATIONS.md to provision a new droplet and reinstall Pterodactyl. After creating an empty server, drop the restored world/, world_nether/, world_the_end/ folders into the server volume (replace any defaults). chown -R 988:988 so Docker can read them.

Option B — Run vanilla / Paper directly without Pterodactyl Download Paper 26.1.2 jar, unzip the restored world into the same directory as the jar, accept the EULA, run:

java -Xms2G -Xmx2G -jar paper-26.1.2-64.jar nogui

Skips the entire panel — useful if you just want to play locally / on a temporary VM.

What this means for "what if I cancel the droplet"¶

World data: safe as long as Drive has at least one snapshot
Pterodactyl panel state (users, scheduled tasks, the egg config): not backed up, but easy to rebuild
The scripts in this repo are your blueprint for redeploying — they're saved here, not on Drive
DNS / domain / Cloudflare: untouched (those are at the registrar level)

So canceling the droplet costs you about an hour of setup work, but no data.

Sanity check: when did backups last run?¶

ssh -i ~/.ssh/do_minecraft_claude root@<droplet-ip> \
  "source /etc/mc-backup/backup.env && export RESTIC_REPOSITORY RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE && restic snapshots --latest 5"

If you haven't seen a snapshot in >24 hours, something's broken — check /var/log/mc-backup.log and /var/log/mc-idle-monitor.log.