Comments on: Kamal’s missing tutorial – how to deploy a Rails 8 app with Postgres to your VPS

By: Bruno

Bruno — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:31:05 +0000

Hey, Thanks for your post and update to the new Rails and Kamal versions!! I’m trying to setup the pg-backups but it’s not working with my S3 setup. The SECRET_ACCESS_KEY is present in the env for the image but the scripts fail to load it while running the cron job. Any tips on that?!?

By: YiSheng Lee

YiSheng Lee — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 23:54:28 +0000

Hello, thanks for the guide, it is very well written. I am trying to deploy a simple rails app in DigitalOcean Droplet, and I do not have a host, what should I filled in here

proxy:
ssl: false
host: noname-1.localhost

By: rameerez

rameerez — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:15:09 +0000

In reply to Andrés Morales. Yay! Glad it helped. Thanks for commenting!

By: Andrés Morales

Andrés Morales — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 22:56:54 +0000

Thank you! I was having a hard time setting up accessories containers. Your examples on the different options the kamal command provides where very helpful.

By: rameerez

rameerez — Tue, 20 May 2025 14:02:06 +0000

In reply to Stephen.

Thanks, very good insight!

I ended up using a similar image: kartoza/pg-backup

They’re essentially the same

But it looks like eeshugerman/postgres-backup-s3 hasn’t been updated in the last few years, whereas kartoza/pg-backup seems well maintained and updated regularly

Will update the blogpost with my working backup config! Thanks for the idea!

By: rameerez

rameerez — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:59:35 +0000

In reply to domarcio. Thanks for the heads up!

By: rameerez

rameerez — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:59:19 +0000

In reply to FAbian. I think it's passed already but I'm updating the post later today and will update and refresh all configs to make sure they're current and valid!

By: rameerez

rameerez — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:48:18 +0000

In reply to XYZ. Thanks for the heads up! I believe it was necessary in earlier versions of Kamal, but I've just tried removing it with a new Kamal 2.6 app and you're right – it's not needed at all. I'll update the blogpost, thanks!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 21:04:48 +0000

Hey, thanks for the article. Here’s how i do backups with my s3 storage provider, works like a charm. Just add as an additional accessory, like so:

accessories:
pg-backups:
# Boot the service: kamal accessory boot [SERVICE]-postgres-backups -d production
# Manual Backup: kamal accessory exec -i –reuse pg-backups “sh backup.sh” -d production
# Restore from backup: kamal accessory exec -i –reuse pg-backups “sh restore.sh [TIMESTAMP]” -d production
# Restore from backup: kamal accessory exec -i –reuse pg-backups “sh restore.sh 2024-10-05T00:00:00” -d production
image: eeshugerman/postgres-backup-s3:16
host: 159.xxx.xx
env:
clear:
SCHEDULE: “@hourly”
BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS: 20
S3_REGION: ch-dk-2
S3_BUCKET: submissio-db-backups-production
S3_ENDPOINT: https://your-endpoint
S3_PREFIX: postgres-backups
# POSTGRES_HOST: 159.xxx.cxx> Public IP, no longer works because of Firewall
POSTGRES_HOST: 172.18.0.3 # Internal Docker IP (Found via: docker inspect -f ‘{{range.NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}’ submissio-pg-16)
POSTGRES_USER: submissio_user
POSTGRES_DATABASE: submissio_production
LOGS_ENABLED: true
secret:
– POSTGRES_PASSWORD
– PASSPHRASE
– S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
– S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

By: domarcio

domarcio — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 13:23:25 +0000

It works very well. Thanks, Rameerez! I only needed to change a few things. I had some trouble connecting to the database (role does not exist, missing cache, etc.). Below are my changes using Rails 8.0.2.

In the database.yml, I needed specify all databases for production:

production:
primary: &primary_production
<<: *default
database:
username:
password:
host:
cache:
<<: *primary_production
database: gdi_production_cache
migrations_paths: db/cache_migrate
queue:
<<: *primary_production
database: gdi_production_queue
migrations_paths: db/queue_migrate
cable:
<<: *primary_production
database: gdi_production_cable
migrations_paths: db/cable_migrate

In the deploy.yml:

– accessories.postgres.env.clear. I needed put POSTGRES_USER and POSTGRES_DB rather than env vars.

– env.secret: Put POSTGRES_PASSWORD