Uninstalling Talos

This guide covers how to remove Talos from your server, with options to preserve your data for future use or perform a full purge.

Option 1: Preserve Data (Recommended)

This approach stops the Talos service and removes the binary, but keeps all your data intact. You can reinstall later and pick up where you left off.

Bare Binary Mode

# Stop and disable the systemd service
sudo systemctl stop talos
sudo systemctl disable talos

# Remove the systemd unit file
sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/talos.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Remove the binary
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/talos

# (Optional) Stop Traefik
docker stop talos-traefik
docker rm talos-traefik

Your data remains at /opt/talos/:

Preserved Item	Path
Configuration	/opt/talos/.env
Database	/opt/talos/data/talos.db
Service data	/opt/talos/data/services/
Backups	/opt/talos/data/backups/
Traefik config	/opt/talos/data/traefik/

To reinstall later, run the installer again. It will detect the existing data directory and reuse it.

Docker Mode

# Stop and remove the Talos container
docker stop talos
docker rm talos

# (Optional) Stop Traefik
docker stop talos-traefik
docker rm talos-traefik

Your data remains in the Docker volume at /opt/talos/data/. To reinstall:

docker run -d \
  --name talos \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --network talos \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /opt/talos/data:/data \
  --env-file /opt/talos/.env \
  ghcr.io/logic-roastery/project-talos:latest

Option 2: Full Purge

This removes Talos and all associated data permanently.

DANGER

This permanently deletes all apps, deploys, services, backups, and configuration. This action cannot be undone.

Before You Purge

1. Download any backups you want to keep:

   # List backups
   ls /opt/talos/data/backups/
   
   # Copy to a safe location
   cp /opt/talos/data/backups/talos-backup-*.tar.gz ~/talos-backups/

2. Export your .env if you want to reference it later:

   cp /opt/talos/.env ~/talos-env-backup

Bare Binary Full Purge

# Stop and disable the service
sudo systemctl stop talos
sudo systemctl disable talos
sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/talos.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# Remove the binary
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/talos
sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/talos.bak.*

# Remove Traefik container
docker stop talos-traefik 2>/dev/null || true
docker rm talos-traefik 2>/dev/null || true

# Remove the Docker network
docker network rm talos 2>/dev/null || true

# Remove all Talos data
sudo rm -rf /opt/talos

# Remove the system user
sudo userdel talos 2>/dev/null || true

Docker Mode Full Purge

# Stop and remove containers
docker stop talos 2>/dev/null || true
docker rm talos 2>/dev/null || true
docker stop talos-traefik 2>/dev/null || true
docker rm talos-traefik 2>/dev/null || true

# Remove the Docker network
docker network rm talos 2>/dev/null || true

# Remove Docker images
docker rmi ghcr.io/logic-roastery/project-talos:latest 2>/dev/null || true
docker rmi traefik:v3.0 2>/dev/null || true

# Remove all Talos data
sudo rm -rf /opt/talos

# Remove the system user
sudo userdel talos 2>/dev/null || true

Stopping Managed Services

Before uninstalling, you may want to stop managed services (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Garage) that Talos provisioned:

# List Talos-managed containers
docker ps -a --filter "label=managed-by=talos"

# Stop and remove them
docker ps -a --filter "label=managed-by=talos" -q | xargs docker stop
docker ps -a --filter "label=managed-by=talos" -q | xargs docker rm

WARNING

If you want to preserve service data (databases), make sure to back up the service volumes at /opt/talos/data/services/ before removing them.

Verifying Removal

After a full purge, verify everything is cleaned up:

# Check for remaining containers
docker ps -a --filter "label=managed-by=talos"

# Check for remaining data
ls /opt/talos 2>/dev/null || echo "Data directory removed"

# Check for the binary
which talos 2>/dev/null || echo "Binary removed"

# Check systemd
systemctl status talos 2>/dev/null || echo "Service removed"

Next Steps

• Installation -- reinstall Talos
• Backup & Restore -- restore from a previous backup