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Uninstall the Hub

Remove the Watchflare Hub and optionally delete all data. Covers backup, container removal, volume cleanup, and agent clean-up steps.

Before removing the Hub, decide whether you want to preserve your data. The Hub stores everything — metrics history, host registrations, users, alert rules, TLS certificates, and package inventory — in two Docker named volumes: pgdata (TimescaleDB) and pki_data (PKI certificates).

Back up your data first

If there is any chance you will reinstall later, export a database dump before proceeding:

docker exec watchflare-postgres pg_dump -U watchflare watchflare > watchflare-backup.sql

Store the dump somewhere outside the Docker host. The pki_data volume is equally important — agents are registered against the CA it contains. Without the original CA, re-registered agents must be re-enrolled from scratch.

To back up the PKI volume:

docker run --rm -v pki_data:/data -v $(pwd):/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/pki-backup.tar.gz -C /data .

Stop and remove containers

This stops and removes the containers and network, but keeps all data intact (database and TLS certificates stay in their Docker volumes):

docker compose down

You can bring the Hub back up at any time with docker compose up -d — all hosts, metrics, and configuration will still be there.

Remove everything including data

This removes containers, network, and all Docker volumes:

docker compose down -v

Danger

This permanently and irrecoverably deletes all metrics history, host registrations, users, package inventory, alert rules, and TLS certificates. Agents registered against this Hub will no longer be able to connect — they must be re-registered against a new installation.

What each volume contains:

Volume	Contents
`pgdata`	TimescaleDB data — all metrics, hosts, users, alert rules, package inventory
`pki_data`	Hub CA private key, CA certificate, server certificate and key

Remove the Docker image

docker rmi ghcr.io/watchflare-io/watchflare:latest
docker rmi timescale/timescaledb:latest-pg16

Clean up config files

Remove the .env and docker-compose.yml from the server:

rm docker-compose.yml .env

If you opened ports in a firewall for the Hub (8080, 50051), close them:

# ufw example
sudo ufw delete allow 8080/tcp
sudo ufw delete allow 50051/tcp

Verify removal

Confirm no Hub containers or volumes remain:

docker ps -a | grep watchflare
docker volume ls | grep -E 'pgdata|pki_data'

Both commands should return no output.

Uninstall agents

Removing the Hub does not uninstall agents running on monitored hosts. Their service will keep trying to reconnect until stopped. To remove agents:

Uninstall on Linux or macOS