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Backup, Restore & Run-at-Boot

AETHON keeps all of its state under ~/.aethon (config, sessions, memory, recordings, scheduled jobs). This page covers backing it up and running AETHON automatically at login.

Backup​

aethon backup                 # → ~/.aethon-backup-<timestamp>.tar.gz
aethon backup -o /path/out.tar.gz

aethon backup archives ~/.aethon to a .tar.gz. SQLite databases (memory.sqlite) are copied with the live-safe backup API, so the archive is consistent even while the gateway is running; the transient logs/ folder is skipped.

For a fully-quiescent backup you can also just stop AETHON and tar the directory yourself:

tar -czf aethon-backup.tar.gz -C ~ .aethon          # while stopped
sqlite3 ~/.aethon/memory.sqlite ".backup mem.bak"   # live DB snapshot

Docker: the state lives in the aethon-data named volume — back it up with

docker run --rm -v aethon-data:/data -v "$PWD":/out alpine \
  tar -czf /out/aethon-data.tar.gz -C /data .

Restore​

# stop AETHON first
tar -xzf ~/.aethon-backup-<timestamp>.tar.gz -C ~/.aethon

(The archive paths are relative to ~/.aethon.) For Docker, extract into the volume the same way you backed it up.

Run at boot​

aethon service install

This writes a service unit that keeps aethon start running and restarts it on failure, with stdout/err in ~/.aethon/logs/:

  • macOS: a launchd agent at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.aethon.gateway.plist. Enable it with launchctl load <path>.
  • Linux: a systemd user unit at ~/.config/systemd/user/aethon.service. Enable it with systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable --now aethon.

The command prints the exact enable command for your platform. Retention (old session-reset backups and recordings) is pruned automatically at each boot — see the retention config.