Administration
Making backups
Multiple options exist for making backups of your paperless instance, depending on how you installed paperless.
Before making a backup, it's probably best to make sure that paperless is not actively consuming documents at that time.
Options available to any installation of paperless:
-
Use the document exporter. The document exporter exports all your documents, thumbnails, metadata, and database contents to a specific folder. You may import your documents and settings into a fresh instance of paperless again or store your documents in another DMS with this export.
The document exporter is also able to update an already existing export. Therefore, incremental backups with
rsync
are entirely possible.The exporter does not include API tokens and they will need to be re-generated after importing.
Caution
You cannot import the export generated with one version of paperless in a different version of paperless. The export contains an exact image of the database, and migrations may change the database layout.
Options available to docker installations:
-
Backup the docker volumes. These usually reside within
/var/lib/docker/volumes
on the host and you need to be root in order to access them.Paperless uses 4 volumes:
paperless_media
: This is where your documents are stored.paperless_data
: This is where auxiliary data is stored. This folder also contains the SQLite database, if you use it.paperless_pgdata
: Exists only if you use PostgreSQL and contains the database.paperless_dbdata
: Exists only if you use MariaDB and contains the database.
Options available to bare-metal and non-docker installations:
-
Backup the entire paperless folder. This ensures that if your paperless instance crashes at some point or your disk fails, you can simply copy the folder back into place and it works.
When using PostgreSQL or MariaDB, you'll also have to backup the database.
Restoring
If you've backed-up Paperless-ngx using the document exporter, restoring can simply be done with the document importer.
Of course, other backup strategies require restoring any volumes, folders and database copies you created in the steps above.
Updating Paperless
Docker Route
If a new release of paperless-ngx is available, upgrading depends on how you installed paperless-ngx in the first place. The releases are available at the release page.
First of all, make sure no active processes (like consumption) are running, then make a backup.
After that, ensure that paperless is stopped:
-
If you pull the image from the docker hub, all you need to do is:
The Docker Compose files refer to the
latest
version, which is always the latest stable release. -
If you built the image yourself, do the following:
Running docker compose up
will also apply any new database migrations.
If you see everything working, press CTRL+C once to gracefully stop
paperless. Then you can start paperless-ngx with -d
to have it run in
the background.
Note
In version 0.9.14, the update process was changed. In 0.9.13 and
earlier, the Docker Compose files specified exact versions and pull
won't automatically update to newer versions. In order to enable
updates as described above, either get the new docker-compose.yml
file from
here
or edit the docker-compose.yml
file, find the line that says
and replace the version with latest
:
Note
In version 1.7.1 and onwards, the Docker image can now be pinned to a
release series. This is often combined with automatic updaters such as
Watchtower to allow safer unattended upgrading to new bugfix releases
only. It is still recommended to always review release notes before
upgrading. To pin your install to a release series, edit the
docker-compose.yml
find the line that says
and replace the version with the series you want to track, for example:
Bare Metal Route
After grabbing the new release and unpacking the contents, do the following:
-
Update dependencies. New paperless version may require additional dependencies. The dependencies required are listed in the section about bare metal installations.
-
Update python requirements. Keep in mind to activate your virtual environment before that, if you use one.
Note
At times, some dependencies will be removed from requirements.txt. Comparing the versions and removing no longer needed dependencies will keep your system or virtual environment clean and prevent possible conflicts.
-
Migrate the database.
- Including
sudo -Hu <paperless_user>
may be required
This might not actually do anything. Not every new paperless version comes with new database migrations.
- Including
Database Upgrades
In general, paperless does not require a specific version of PostgreSQL or MariaDB and it is safe to update them to newer versions. However, you should always take a backup and follow the instructions from your database's documentation for how to upgrade between major versions.
For PostgreSQL, refer to Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster.
For MariaDB, refer to Upgrading MariaDB
You may also use the exporter and importer with the --data-only
flag, after creating a new database with the updated version of PostgreSQL or MariaDB.
Warning
You should not change any settings, especially paths, when doing this or there is a risk of data loss
Management utilities
Paperless comes with some management commands that perform various maintenance tasks on your paperless instance. You can invoke these commands in the following way:
With Docker Compose, while paperless is running:
With docker, while paperless is running:
Bare metal:
- Including
sudo -Hu <paperless_user>
may be required
All commands have built-in help, which can be accessed by executing them
with the argument --help
.
Document exporter
The document exporter exports all your data (including your settings and database contents) from paperless into a folder for backup or migration to another DMS.
If you use the document exporter within a cronjob to backup your data
you might use the -T
flag behind exec to suppress "The input device
is not a TTY" errors. For example:
docker compose exec -T webserver document_exporter ../export
document_exporter target [-c] [-d] [-f] [-na] [-nt] [-p] [-sm] [-z]
optional arguments:
-c, --compare-checksums
-cj, --compare-json
-d, --delete
-f, --use-filename-format
-na, --no-archive
-nt, --no-thumbnail
-p, --use-folder-prefix
-sm, --split-manifest
-z, --zip
-zn, --zip-name
--data-only
--no-progress-bar
--passphrase
target
is a folder to which the data gets written. This includes
documents, thumbnails and a manifest.json
file. The manifest contains
all metadata from the database (correspondents, tags, etc).
When you use the provided docker compose script, specify ../export
as
the target. This path inside the container is automatically mounted on
your host on the folder export
.
If the target directory already exists and contains files, paperless
will assume that the contents of the export directory are a previous
export and will attempt to update the previous export. Paperless will
only export changed and added files. Paperless determines whether a file
has changed by inspecting the file attributes "date/time modified" and
"size". If that does not work out for you, specify -c
or
--compare-checksums
and paperless will attempt to compare file
checksums instead. This is slower. The manifest and metadata json files
are always updated, unless cj
or --compare-json
is specified.
Paperless will not remove any existing files in the export directory. If
you want paperless to also remove files that do not belong to the
current export such as files from deleted documents, specify -d
or --delete
.
Be careful when pointing paperless to a directory that already contains
other files.
The filenames generated by this command follow the format
[date created] [correspondent] [title].[extension]
. If you want
paperless to use PAPERLESS_FILENAME_FORMAT
for exported filenames
instead, specify -f
or --use-filename-format
.
If -na
or --no-archive
is provided, no archive files will be exported,
only the original files.
If -nt
or --no-thumbnail
is provided, thumbnail files will not be exported.
Note
When using the -na
/--no-archive
or -nt
/--no-thumbnail
options
the exporter will not output these files for backup. After importing,
the sanity checker will warn about missing thumbnails and archive files
until they are regenerated with document_thumbnails
or document_archiver
.
It can make sense to omit these files from backup as their content and checksum
can change (new archiver algorithm) and may then cause additional used space in
a deduplicated backup.
If -p
or --use-folder-prefix
is provided, files will be exported
in dedicated folders according to their nature: archive
, originals
,
thumbnails
or json
If -sm
or --split-manifest
is provided, information about document
will be placed in individual json files, instead of a single JSON file. The main
manifest.json will still contain application wide information (e.g. tags, correspondent,
documenttype, etc)
If -z
or --zip
is provided, the export will be a zip file
in the target directory, named according to the current local date or the
value set in -zn
or --zip-name
.
If --data-only
is provided, only the database will be exported. This option is intended
to facilitate database upgrades without needing to clean documents and thumbnails from the media directory.
If --no-progress-bar
is provided, the progress bar will be hidden, rendering the
exporter quiet. This option is useful for scripting scenarios, such as when using the
exporter with crontab
.
If --passphrase
is provided, it will be used to encrypt certain fields in the export. This value
must be provided to import. If this value is lost, the export cannot be imported.
Warning
If exporting with the file name format, there may be errors due to your operating system's maximum path lengths. Try adjusting the export target or consider not using the filename format.
Document importer
The document importer takes the export produced by the Document exporter and imports it into paperless.
The importer works just like the exporter. You point it at a directory, and the script does the rest of the work:
Option | Required | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
source | Yes | N/A | The directory containing an export |
--no-progress-bar |
No | False | If provided, the progress bar will be hidden |
--data-only |
No | False | If provided, only import data, do not import document files or thumbnails |
--passphrase |
No | N/A | If your export was encrypted with a passphrase, must be provided |
When you use the provided docker compose script, put the export inside
the export
folder in your paperless source directory. Specify
../export
as the source
.
Note that .zip files (as can be generated from the exporter) are not supported. You must unzip them into the target directory first.
Note
Importing from a previous version of Paperless may work, but for best results it is suggested to match the versions.
Warning
The importer should be run against a completely empty installation (database and directories) of Paperless-ngx. If using a data only import, only the database must be empty.
Document retagger
Say you've imported a few hundred documents and now want to introduce a tag or set up a new correspondent, and apply its matching to all of the currently-imported docs. This problem is common enough that there are tools for it.
document_retagger [-h] [-c] [-T] [-t] [-i] [--id-range] [--use-first] [-f]
optional arguments:
-c, --correspondent
-T, --tags
-t, --document_type
-s, --storage_path
-i, --inbox-only
--id-range
--use-first
-f, --overwrite
Run this after changing or adding matching rules. It'll loop over all of the documents in your database and attempt to match documents according to the new rules.
Specify any combination of -c
, -T
, -t
and -s
to have the
retagger perform matching of the specified metadata type. If you don't
specify any of these options, the document retagger won't do anything.
Specify -i
to have the document retagger work on documents tagged with
inbox tags only. This is useful when you don't want to mess with your
already processed documents.
Specify --id-range 1 100
to have the document retagger work only on a
specific range of document id´s. This can be useful if you have a lot of
documents and want to test the matching rules only on a subset of
documents.
When multiple document types or correspondents match a single document,
the retagger won't assign these to the document. Specify --use-first
to override this behavior and just use the first correspondent or type
it finds. This option does not apply to tags, since any amount of tags
can be applied to a document.
Finally, -f
specifies that you wish to overwrite already assigned
correspondents, types and/or tags. The default behavior is to not assign
correspondents and types to documents that have this data already
assigned. -f
works differently for tags: By default, only additional
tags get added to documents, no tags will be removed. With -f
, tags
that don't match a document anymore get removed as well.
Managing the Automatic matching algorithm
The Auto matching algorithm requires a trained neural network to work. This network needs to be updated whenever something in your data changes. The docker image takes care of that automatically with the task scheduler. You can manually renew the classifier by invoking the following management command:
This command takes no arguments.
Document thumbnails
Use this command to re-create document thumbnails. Optionally include the --document {id}
option to generate thumbnails for a specific document only.
You may also specify --processes
to control the number of processes used to generate new thumbnails. The default is to utilize
a quarter of the available processors.
Managing the document search index
The document search index is responsible for delivering search results for the website. The document index is automatically updated whenever documents get added to, changed, or removed from paperless. However, if the search yields non-existing documents or won't find anything, you may need to recreate the index manually.
Specify reindex
to have the index created from scratch. This may take
some time.
Specify optimize
to optimize the index. This updates certain aspects
of the index and usually makes queries faster and also ensures that the
autocompletion works properly. This command is regularly invoked by the
task scheduler.
Managing filenames
If you use paperless' feature to assign custom filenames to your documents, you can use this command to move all your files after changing the naming scheme.
Warning
Since this command moves your documents, it is advised to do a backup beforehand. The renaming logic is robust and will never overwrite or delete a file, but you can't ever be careful enough.
The command takes no arguments and processes all your documents at once.
Learn how to use Management Utilities.
Sanity checker
Paperless has a built-in sanity checker that inspects your document collection for issues.
The issues detected by the sanity checker are as follows:
- Missing original files.
- Missing archive files.
- Inaccessible original files due to improper permissions.
- Inaccessible archive files due to improper permissions.
- Corrupted original documents by comparing their checksum against what is stored in the database.
- Corrupted archive documents by comparing their checksum against what is stored in the database.
- Missing thumbnails.
- Inaccessible thumbnails due to improper permissions.
- Documents without any content (warning).
- Orphaned files in the media directory (warning). These are files that are not referenced by any document in paperless.
The command takes no arguments. Depending on the size of your document archive, this may take some time.
Fetching e-mail
Paperless automatically fetches your e-mail every 10 minutes by default. If you want to invoke the email consumer manually, call the following management command:
The command takes no arguments and processes all your mail accounts and rules.
Tip
To use OAuth access tokens for mail fetching, select the box to indicate the password is actually a token when creating or editing a mail account. The details for creating a token depend on your email provider.
Creating archived documents
Paperless stores archived PDF/A documents alongside your original documents. These archived documents will also contain selectable text for image-only originals. These documents are derived from the originals, which are always stored unmodified. If coming from an earlier version of paperless, your documents won't have archived versions.
This command creates PDF/A documents for your documents.
This command will only attempt to create archived documents when no
archived document exists yet, unless --overwrite
is specified. If
--document <id>
is specified, the archiver will only process that
document.
Note
This command essentially performs OCR on all your documents again,
according to your settings. If you run this with
PAPERLESS_OCR_MODE=redo
, it will potentially run for a very long time.
You can cancel the command at any time, since this command will skip
already archived versions the next time it is run.
Note
Some documents will cause errors and cannot be converted into PDF/A documents, such as encrypted PDF documents. The archiver will skip over these documents each time it sees them.
Managing encryption
Warning
Encryption was removed in paperless-ng 0.9 because it did not really provide any additional security, the passphrase was stored in a configuration file on the same system as the documents. Furthermore, the entire text content of the documents is stored plain in the database, even if your documents are encrypted. Filenames are not encrypted as well. Finally, the web server provides transparent access to your encrypted documents.
Consider running paperless on an encrypted filesystem instead, which will then at least provide security against physical hardware theft.
Enabling encryption
Enabling encryption is no longer supported.
Disabling encryption
Basic usage to disable encryption of your document store:
(Note: If PAPERLESS_PASSPHRASE
isn't set already, you need to specify
it here)
Detecting duplicates
Paperless already catches and prevents upload of exactly matching documents, however a new scan of an existing document may not produce an exact bit for bit duplicate. But the content should be exact or close, allowing detection.
This tool does a fuzzy match over document content, looking for those which look close according to a given ratio.
At this time, other metadata (such as correspondent or type) is not taken into account by the detection.
Option | Required | Default | Description |
---|---|---|---|
--ratio | No | 85.0 | a number between 0 and 100, setting how similar a document must be for it to be reported. Higher numbers mean more similarity. |
--processes | No | 1/4 of system cores | Number of processes to use for matching. Setting 1 disables multiple processes |
--delete | No | False | If provided, one document of a matched pair above the ratio will be deleted. |
Warning
If providing the --delete
option, it is highly recommended to have a backup.
While every effort has been taken to ensure proper operation, there is always the
chance of deletion of a file you want to keep.
Prune history (audit log) entries
If the audit log is enabled Paperless-ngx keeps an audit log of all changes made to documents. Functionality to automatically remove entries for deleted documents was added but entries created prior to this are not removed. This command allows you to prune the audit log of entries that are no longer needed.