Skip to content
sealup

The full mirror

By default sealup deletes only files it uploaded itself, once they leave your build. Anything else on the server stays: files from before sealup, files the site writes, files someone put there by hand. The full mirror goes further: it makes a server folder match the build exactly.

Turn it on

Section titled “Turn it on”

For one upload entry, every deploy:

upload:
  public_html:
    to: www
    mirror: true
exclude:
  - public_html/uploads   # users' uploads: never sent, never deleted

For every upload entry, one run only, to clean a target once without editing the config:

Terminal window
sealup deploy --dry-run --mirror   # see every delete first
sealup deploy --mirror

What it deletes

Section titled “What it deletes”

sealup lists the mirrored server folder, all the way down, and deletes every file and every emptied folder that is not in the build: on a first deploy too, so one run cleans an old site. Deletes still run last, once every upload has arrived: a failed upload never leaves the site with files missing.

The dry run lists every delete, each mirror delete marked not in the build; a file sealup uploaded and that left the build is listed apart:

  First deploy: files not in your build are deleted (mirror).
  Would delete 2 files  (mirror: sealup did not upload them)
    - old.php  not in the build
    - old/a/b.txt  not in the build

What it never deletes

Section titled “What it never deletes”
  • Excluded paths. List the server folders your site writes into (uploads, caches, logs) in exclude, on their local side. Nothing below an excluded folder is even listed.
  • sealup’s file list and its lock, which live outside the folders you upload to.
  • Files written from a secret (write:): they are part of what the deploy puts there.
  • Symlinks on the server. Without allow: [symlinks] a link stops the run before any change (symlink); with it, the link is left alone and nothing below it is listed.

A pull: folder is not protected unless an exclude covers it. sealup check points out one that is not:

  ! The mirror deletes the pull: folder www/resources: no exclude covers it.
    To keep it, add public_html/resources to exclude in sealup.yml.

Limits

Section titled “Limits”

Listing takes time on a large site, which is why the mirror is off by default. sealup lists at most 200,000 entries and 64 folder levels: past that, the run stops before any delete, with exit 6 (listing-too-large). Exclude the large server folders (they are never listed), or drop the mirror.

Not the whole account

Section titled “Not the whole account”

With the mirror on, a target folder that is the server’s root (/) or the login folder (/~) stops the run before any change, with exit 6 (risky-folder). There, the mirror could delete whatever else the account holds: mail, other sites, backups.

The check looks at the target folder, even when the mirrored entry goes into a folder inside it, as public_html → www does under a /~ target. To mirror www there, either make /~/www the target folder (with to: . and mirror: true on the entry), or add allow: [root-folder] to the target once you have checked what the mirror lists: it deletes only inside the mirrored entries’ folders (see allow:).

Without the mirror, a deploy into the login folder runs as usual: it deletes only what it uploaded.

Learn more

Section titled “Learn more”