Figuring out where my database tables went after database error in an OLS-WP docker server.

[goingmental]

What happened:

I run a single OLS+WP docker stack (litespeed+phpmyadmin+mariadb) in a Ubuntu OVS server.

One day, my Wordpress sites report "Error establishing database connection."

Navigating to website.com/wp-admin will show a page with the following message: "We were able to connect to the database server (which means your username and password is okay) but not able to select the wpacezalba database."

Docker restart and docker-compose down + docker-compose up -d does not solve the problem. Sudo reboot does not solve the problem.

The /sites folder still has the files of the Wordpress sites.

Webadmin still has the vhost records for my Wordpress sites.

I can still log into phpmyadmin using the credentials I've made using database.sh. But the Wordpress tables no longer exist.

I've encountered this twice already. The first time, I just repeated the entire process of setting it up from scratch. I obviously don't want to go through that again unless there is nothing else left to do, especially since my credentials still work.

What I want to happen:

1. Recover my websites in some way.

My initial research has shown me that when a mariadb docker image goes down, the data disappears with it. However, it can be setup in such a way that the database data remains persistent.

Being a docker noob, I don't know if the OLS+WP docker is set up in a way that (1) the WP Tables is written to disk or (2) is kept live in memory only. Does anyone know which is it?

I am hoping that it is (1), because if it is, I might still be able to recover it in some way given that the database credentials still work somehow. More so, before this error, docker restart does not cause a database error or wipe out the Wordpress tables. If it's (1), is recovery still possible? How?

(2) is bad obviously. This would mean that recovery would impossible for now; and that I'd have to do over.

2. Proof my site from this scenario

Can anyone recommend a command-line backup setup for a OLS+WP docker stack, in case my docker server crashes again and my Wordpress database tables disappear once more? Like automating a mirror of the live container daily/weekly, and running a command to load or recover from this mirror. Or a recommended way to do a database dump of the live mariadb container from the command line.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Cold-Egg]

For mysql docker container, there's a volume set up by default to store data in the disk (/data/db), so docker-compose down, start, restart will not cause the data to disappear.

    volumes:
      - "./data/db:/var/lib/mysql:delegated"

 

[goingmental]

Issue resolved. It is no fault of the container. Apparently my phpMyAdmin was hacked. It is similar to this incident on bitcoinabuse.com. I'm going to assume my entire server is compromised at this point. Good thing nothing critical was on the server.