collective.recipe.backup 0.9

bin/backup script: sensible defaults around bin/repozo

Contents

• Detailed Documentation

  • Example usage

    • Backup

    • Restore

    • Snapshots

  • Supported options

  • Cron job integration

  • Advanced usage: multiple Data.fs files

• Contributors

• Change history

  • 0.9 (2008-12-05)

  • 0.8 (2008-09-23)

  • 0.7 (2008-09-19)

  • 0.6 (2008-09-19)

  • 0.5 (2008-09-18)

  • 0.4 (2008-08-19)

  • 0.3.1 (2008-07-04)

  • 0.2 (2008-07-03)

  • 0.1 (2008-07-03)

bin/repozo is a zope script to make backups of your Data.fs. Looking up the settings can be a chore. And you have to pick a directory where to put the backups. This recipe provides sensible defaults for your common backup tasks. Making backups a piece of cake is important!

• bin/backup makes a backup.

• bin/restore restores the latest backup.

• bin/snapshotbackup makes a full backup, separate from the regular backups. Handy for copying the current production database to your laptop or right before a big change in the site.

Some extra information:

• Code repository: https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/buildout/collective.recipe.backup

• Questions and comments to mailto:[e-mail]

Detailed Documentation

Example usage

Just to isolate some test differences, we run an empty buildout once:

>>> ignore = system(buildout)

The simplest way to use it to add a part in buildout.cfg like this:

>>> write('buildout.cfg',
... """
... [buildout]
... parts = backup
...
... [backup]
... recipe = collective.recipe.backup
... """)

Running the buildout adds a backup, snapshotbackup and restore scripts to the bin/ directory and, by default, it creates the var/backups and var/snapshotbackups dirs:

>>> print system(buildout) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS
Installing backup.
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/backups
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/backup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/snapshotbackup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/restore'.
<BLANKLINE>
>>> ls('var')
d  backups
d  snapshotbackups
>>> ls('bin')
-  backup
-  buildout
-  restore
-  snapshotbackup

Backup

Calling bin/backup results in a normal repozo backup. We put in place a mock repozo script that prints the options it is passed (and make it executable). It is horridly unix-specific at the moment.

>>> import sys
>>> write('bin', 'repozo',
...       "#!%s\nimport sys\nprint ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])" % sys.executable)
>>> #write('bin', 'repozo', "#!/bin/sh\necho $*")
>>> dontcare = system('chmod u+x bin/repozo')

By default, backups are done in var/backups:

>>> print system('bin/backup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups --gzip
INFO: Backing up database file: ...

Restore

You can restore the very latest backup with bin/restore:

>>> print system('bin/restore')
--recover -o /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups
INFO: Restoring...

You can also restore the backup as of a certain date. Just pass a date argument. According to repozo: specify UTC (not local) time. The format is yyyy-mm-dd[-hh[-mm[-ss]]].

>>> print system('bin/restore 1972-12-25')
--recover -o /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups -D 1972-12-25
INFO: Date restriction: restoring state at 1972-12-25.
INFO: Restoring...

Snapshots

For quickly grabbing the current state of a production database so you can download it to your development laptop, you want a full backup. But you shouldn’t interfere with the regular backup regime. Likewise, a quick backup just before updating the production server is a good idea. For that, the bin/snapshotbackup is great. It places a full backup in, by default, var/snapshotbackups.

>>> print system('bin/snapshotbackup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups -F --gzip
INFO: Making snapshot backup:...

Supported options

The recipe supports the following options, none of which are needed by default. The most common one to change is location, as that allows you to place your backups in some system-wide directory like /var/zopebackups/instancename/.

location

Location where backups are stored. Defaults to var/backups inside the buildout directory.

keep

Number of full backups to keep. Defaults to 2, which means that the current and the previous full backup are kept. Older backups are removed, including their incremental backups. Set it to 0 to keep all backups.

datafs

In case the Data.fs isn’t in the default var/filestorage/Data.fs location, this option can overwrite it.

full

By default, incremental backups are made. If this option is set to ‘true’, bin/backup will always make a full backup.

debug

In rare cases when you want to know exactly what’s going on, set debug to ‘true’ to get debug level logging of the recipe itself. Repozo is also run with --verbose if this option is enabled.

snapshotlocation

Location where snapshot defaults are stored. Defaults to var/snapshotbackups inside the buildout directory.

gzip

Use repozo’s zipping functionality. ‘true’ by default. Set it to ‘false’ and repozo will notgzip its files. Note that gzipped databases are called *.fsz, not *.fs.gz. Changed in 0.8: the default used to be false, but it so totally makes sense to gzip your backups that we changed the default.

additional_filestorages

Advanced option, only needed when you have split for instance a catalog.fs out of the regular Data.fs. Use it to specify the extra filestorages. (See explanation further on).

We’ll use all options:

>>> write('buildout.cfg',
... """
... [buildout]
... parts = backup
...
... [backup]
... recipe = collective.recipe.backup
... location = ${buildout:directory}/myproject
... keep = 3
... datafs = subfolder/myproject.fs
... full = true
... debug = true
... snapshotlocation = snap/my
... gzip = false
... """)
>>> print system(buildout) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS
Uninstalling backup.
Installing backup.
backup: Created /sample-buildout/myproject
backup: Created /sample-buildout/snap/my
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/backup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/snapshotbackup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/restore'.
<BLANKLINE>

Backups are now stored in the /myproject folder inside buildout and the Data.fs location is handled correctly despite not being an absolute path:

>>> print system('bin/backup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/subfolder/myproject.fs -r /sample-buildout/myproject -F --verbose
INFO: Backing up database file: ...

The same is true for the snapshot backup.

>>> print system('bin/snapshotbackup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/subfolder/myproject.fs -r /sample-buildout/snap/my -F --verbose
INFO: Making snapshot backup:...

Untested in this file, as it would create directories in your root or your home dir, are absolute links (starting with a ‘/’) or directories in your home dir or relative (../) path. They do work, of course. Also ~ and $BACKUP-style environment variables are expanded.

Cron job integration

bin/backup is of course ideal to put in your cronjob instead of a whole bin/repozo .... line. But you don’t want the “INFO” level logging that you get, as you’ll get that in your mailbox. In your cronjob, just add -q or --quiet and bin/backup will shut up unless there’s a problem.

>>> print system('bin/backup -q')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/subfolder/myproject.fs -r /sample-buildout/myproject -F --verbose
>>> print system('bin/backup --quiet')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/subfolder/myproject.fs -r /sample-buildout/myproject -F --verbose

In our case the --backup ... lines above are just the mock repozo script that still prints something. So it proves that the command is executed, but it won’t end up in the output.

Advanced usage: multiple Data.fs files

Sometimes, a Data.fs is split into several files. Most common reason is to have a regular Data.fs and a catalog.fs which contains the portal_catalog. This is supported with the additional_filestorages option:

>>> write('buildout.cfg',
... """
... [buildout]
... parts = backup
...
... [backup]
... recipe = collective.recipe.backup
... additional_filestorages =
...     catalog
...     another
... """)

The additional backups have to be stored separate from the Data.fs backup. That’s done by appending the file’s name and creating extra backup directories named that way:

>>> print system(buildout) # doctest:+ELLIPSIS
Uninstalling backup.
Installing backup.
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/backups_catalog
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups_catalog
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/backups_another
backup: Created /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups_another
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/backup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/snapshotbackup'.
Generated script '/sample-buildout/bin/restore'.
<BLANKLINE>
>>> ls('var')
d  backups
d  backups_another
d  backups_catalog
d  snapshotbackups
d  snapshotbackups_another
d  snapshotbackups_catalog

The various backups are done one after the other. They cannot be done at the same time with repozo. So they are not completely in sync. The “other” databases are backed up first as a small difference in the catalog is just mildly irritating, but the other way around users can get real errors:

>>> print system('bin/backup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/catalog.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups_catalog --gzip
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/another.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups_another --gzip
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups --gzip
INFO: Backing up database file: ...
INFO: Backing up database file: ...
INFO: Backing up database file: ...

Same with snapshot backups:

>>> print system('bin/snapshotbackup')
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/catalog.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups_catalog -F --gzip
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/another.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups_another -F --gzip
--backup -f /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/snapshotbackups -F --gzip
INFO: Making snapshot backup: ...
INFO: Making snapshot backup: ...
INFO: Making snapshot backup: ...

And a restore restores all three backups:

>>> print system('bin/restore')
--recover -o /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/catalog.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups_catalog
--recover -o /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/another.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups_another
--recover -o /sample-buildout/var/filestorage/Data.fs -r /sample-buildout/var/backups
INFO: Restoring...
INFO: Restoring...
INFO: Restoring...

Contributors

collective.recipe.backup is basically a port of ye olde instancemanager’s backup functionality. That backup functionality was coded mostly by Reinout van Rees and Maurits van Rees, both from Zest software

Creating the buildout recipe was done by Reinout with some fixes by Maurits.

Change history

0.9 (2008-12-05)

• Windows path compatibility fix. [Juan A. Diaz]

0.8 (2008-09-23)

• Changed the default for gzipping to True. Adding gzip = true to all our server deployment configs gets tired pretty quickly, so doing it by default is the best default. Stuff like this needs to be changed before a 1.0 release :-) [reinout]

• Backup of additional databases (if you have configured them) now takes place before the backup of the main database (same with restore). [reinout]

0.7 (2008-09-19)

• Added $BACKUP-style enviroment variable subsitution in addition to the tilde expansion offered by 0.6. [reinout, idea by Fred van Dijk]

0.6 (2008-09-19)

• Fixed the test setup so both bin/test and python setup.py test work. [reinout+maurits]

• Added support for ~ in path names. And fixed a bug at the same time that would occur if you call the backup script from a different location than your buildout directory in combination with a non-absolute backup location. [reinout]

0.5 (2008-09-18)

• Added support for additional_filestorages option, needed for for instance a split-out catalog.fs. [reinout]

• Test setup fixes. [reinout+maurits]

0.4 (2008-08-19)

• Allowed the user to make the script more quiet (say in a cronjob) by using ‘bin/backup -q’ (or –quiet). [maurits]

• Refactored initialization template so it is easier to change. [maurits]

0.3.1 (2008-07-04)

• Added ‘gzip’ option, including changes to the cleanup functionality that treats .fsz also as a full backup like .fs. [reinout]

• Fixed typo: repoze is now repozo everywhere… [reinout]

0.2 (2008-07-03)

• Extra tests and documentation change for ‘keep’: the default is to keep 2 backups instead of all backups. [reinout]

• If debug=true, then repozo is also run in –verbose mode. [reinout]

0.1 (2008-07-03)

• Added bin/restore. [reinout]

• Added snapshot backups. [reinout]

• Enabled cleaning up of older backups. [reinout]

• First working version that runs repozo and that creates a backup dir if needed. [reinout]

• Started project based on zopeskel template. [reinout]