Where Does Crater Store Invoices and Data?
Crater self-hosted env file, MariaDB volume and storage folder on Linux.
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Self hosted Crater (Laravel plus Vue) splits data three ways: the .env file with app key and database credentials, the MariaDB volume holding companies, invoices, estimates and payments, and the storage folder with uploads and generated PDFs. The repo checkout itself is disposable.
The install wizard writes the database config on first run against the db host with the documented crater credentials. Back up .env plus a database dump plus storage together. Losing .env while keeping the database still breaks decryption of stored secrets, so treat the trio as one unit.
Where Crater stores this, by platform
.env, MariaDB db volume and storage/ in your Crater folder
Compose mounts the repo at /var/www with db persisted in the db volume (or ./docker-compose/db/data for host binds). Dump MariaDB regularly and copy .env and storage alongside. Mobile apps read the same server.
Frequently asked questions
how do I back up self-hosted Crater
Copy .env, dump the crater MariaDB database, and archive the storage folder with uploads and PDFs. Restore all three with matching app key or encrypted fields will not decrypt.
where are Crater invoice PDFs kept
Generated into the storage folder of the app directory and served on demand. Regenerate any time from the invoice records; the database rows are the source, PDFs are renderings.
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