Upgraded my Sonarqube container and I lost all my data

SonarQube Server / Community Build
1

I am running SonarQube with a Postgres and an nginx container on a remote VM via docker-compose file. Initially, I was using sonarqube:latest. I took the backup of my postgres and nginx data using a contemporary container -

docker run --rm -v sonar_sonarqube_data:/source -v $(pwd)/backup:/backup ubuntu tar -czvf /backup/sonarqube_data.tar.gz /source
docker run --rm -v sonar_sonarqube_extensions:/source -v $(pwd)/backup:/backup ubuntu tar -czvf /backup/sonarqube_extensions.tar.gz /source
docker run --rm -v sonar_sonarqube_logs:/source -v $(pwd)/backup:/backup ubuntu tar -czvf /backup/sonarqube_logs.tar.gz /source
docker run --rm -v sonar_postgresql:/source -v $(pwd)/backup:/backup ubuntu tar -czvf /backup/postgresql.tar.gz /source

Then I changed the image version to 25.2.0.102705-community and rebuilt the containers (docker compose down and docker compose up -d).

I lost all my projects. I had to set them up manually again. Here is the docker-compose.yml which I’m using -

services:
  sonarqube:
    image: sonarqube:25.2.0.102705-community
    container_name: sonarqube
    ports:
      - "9000:9000"
      - "9092:9092"
    environment:
      - SONARQUBE_JDBC_USERNAME=brothermayihavesomeoats
      - SONARQUBE_JDBC_PASSWORD=brothermayihavesomeoats
      - SONARQUBE_JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://db:5432/sonar
    networks:
      - sonarnet
    volumes:
      - sonarqube_data:/opt/sonarqube/data
      - sonarqube_extensions:/opt/sonarqube/extensions
      - sonarqube_logs:/opt/sonarqube/logs
  db:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: postgres
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=brothermayihavesomeoats
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=brothermayihavesomeoats
    networks:
      - sonarnet
    volumes:
       - postgresql:/var/lib/postgresql/data

As you can see, I have persisting volumes. But when I changed the SonarQube version and rebuilt all my containers, I lost all my data.

How do I upgrade the sonarqube versions without loosing my data?

3

Hey there.

You should be using SONAR_ env variables: Environment variables | SonarQube Community Build Documentation rather than SONARQUBE_.

It has been this way for quite a while (SonarQube v9.9 is when support for the SONARQUBE_ environment variables was removed), so I’m not sure how your SonarQube Server has been running. Or maybe this is some copy-paste from a different template?

Anyways, I suggest adjusting your environment variables. That will hopefully bring everything back together.