RE: [gentoo-server] [Somewhat OT] Backup Solution (Gentoo Based)

[Christopher Schwerdt]

> Chris Shelton wrote:
> >
> > I would suggest looking at bacula: http://www.bacula.org/ .  This is a
> > free open source backup program that likely meets most of your needs.
> > Bacula has a moderately active users mailing list, detailed
> > documentation, MySQL or postgreSQL as backup catalog options, and
> > responsive developers.
> >
> > chris
>
> I would like to thank everyone for their suggestions.  Bacula looks like
> a close fit.  I don't know how it flew under my radar.  My question, for
> those using it, would be how do you handle DB backups?  MySQL backups
> are of the utmost importance here.
>
> I cannot do a mysqldump to the local client filesystem and back that up,
> as that would limit how much space I have available in the partition for
> the DB itself (I would have to save enough space to dump a copy of
> everything).  That isn't really a viable option with our configuration.
>   I was hoping for a backup solution that could backup from the DB to a
> central location without intermediary steps.
>
> How are Bacula users backing up their DB servers?
>
> Thanks,
> Kirk

Kirk,

I use mysqlhotcopy and copy the databases to a new folder (which then gets backed up by Bacula).  Obviously, this isn't something you want to do due to disk space restrictions.

So in your case I'd also recommend LVM (as a previous poster said).  You need to write a script that connects to your MySQL server and issues a FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK in order to flush your database to disk.  At that point you can create an LVM snapshot and then disconnect from the SQL server (disconnecting removes the read lock).  Once Bacula has finished, you can have it kill the snapshot.  This can all be accomplished using Bacula's "Client Run Before Job" and "Client Run After Job" configuration entries.

Good luck!

-Chris


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