Upgrade and roll back a Sovrium app

Schema migrations are forward-only — a released migration is never rewritten, and there is no automatic downgrade. So a safe upgrade always pairs with a backup you can restore.

Upgrade

Back up first (SQLite, or a database snapshot on Postgres), then move to the new version and restart. The schema migration runs on boot, inside a transaction, before the app serves traffic:

sqlite3 .sovrium/database.db ".backup '/backups/pre-upgrade.db'"
sovrium update            # binary install; or: docker pull ghcr.io/sovrium/sovrium:latest
sovrium stop && sovrium start app.ts

If the migration fails, the transaction rolls back and the server refuses to start on an inconsistent schema — you are never left half-migrated.

Roll back

Because migrations don't reverse, a rollback restores the pre-upgrade data alongside the prior binary/image:

sovrium stop
curl -fsSL https://sovrium.com/install | sh -s -- --version 0.21.0   # the version you upgraded from
cp /backups/pre-upgrade.db .sovrium/database.db && rm -f .sovrium/database.db-wal .sovrium/database.db-shm
sovrium start app.ts

For zero-downtime, run the new version as a second instance behind your proxy, verify it, then switch traffic — keeping the old instance until you're confident.

Next

• Schema Migrations — why released migrations are immutable.
• Back up & restore SQLite — the backup this guide relies on.
• CLI Reference — update, stop, and start.