Strapi Admin Content Missing After PostgreSQL Environment Variable Changes and Redeployment
sasha
HOBBYOP

8 months ago

I've been using a Strapi template, and everything worked fine for six months. Recently, I noticed that all the content I had added in the Strapi admin panel disappeared (and there was quite a lot of it).

I found out that PostgreSQL now requires several environment variables to be explicitly set — for example, the value from POSTGRES_PASSWORD had to be duplicated in PGPASSWORD, among others. After adding these variables and redeploying the project, my entire database was gone.

Please help me understand what happened and how I can recover my data.

$10 Bounty

2 Replies

sasha
HOBBYOP

8 months ago

f0906ca0-c156-4119-923e-fc7ac7a17e22

tomhagen
FREE

8 months ago

Likely cause: Railway created a new PostgreSQL service when you added those environment variables, disconnecting from your original database (which probably still exists with your data).

Possible Options you can follow -

  1. Check Railway dashboard for multiple PostgreSQL services - your data is likely in the old one

  2. Look for backups/snapshots in your database service settings (Railway has automatic backups for volumes)

  3. Try reverting to your original environment variables and redeploy

  4. railway logs --service your-database-service , railway logs --service your-strapi-service in railway cli

  5. Check what databases exist in your project \l\dt

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