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Re: best way to backup repositories

From: Ryan Schmidt <subversion-2008b_at_ryandesign.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 02:40:14 -0500

On Jun 4, 2008, at 11:49, Rush Manbert wrote:

> On Jun 4, 2008, at 6:37 AM, Ulrich Eckhardt wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 04 June 2008, Marko Kaening wrote:
>>
>>> I wonder what the best way for a regular backup of svn repos is...
>>>
>>> There is "svnhotcopy.py", but there is also the possibility of
>>> "svnadmin
>>> dump". The first would only work safely if there is no update of
>>> the svn
>>> version, but the latter might be a terrible slowdown of the
>>> backup process
>>> in contrast to simply copying the hotcopied svn repo dir.
>>>
>>> Any hints for me?
>>
>> Use both. The hotcopy script is not much more than a simple
>> filesystem copy,
>> only that it copies things in an order that assures that you don't
>> get an
>> inconsistent repository if you are in the middle of a transaction.
>>
>> Then, from that repository, you create a dumpfile for which you make
>> incremental backups using some backup software.
> <snip>
>
> Why do this step? If I have the hot copy backup, doesn't that
> protect me if my main repository is lost? Making a dumpfile and
> backing it up incrementally seems to lose information that the hot
> copy preserved (the configuration info), and I could always make a
> dumpfile from the hot copy at the time I need to restore from it.
> But I would think I would just replace the original repository with
> the hot copy if I ever needed to do a restore after a disaster. Am
> I missing some subtlety about the backup/restore mechanism?

The hotcopy is fine as a hot spare, to swap in if the main repository
fails. But you must be using the same processor architecture, and at
least as new a version of Subversion and (if applicable) BerkeleyDB.

For permanent archival purposes, a dumpfile is better, because the
dumpfile format is specifically designed to abstract away differences
in processor architecture or software version. So if you make a
dumpfile today, you'll always be able to load it into a new
repository running on any machine with any (?) version of Subversion.
But a hotcopy is more restricted in what platforms and with what
combinations of software version it'll work.

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Received on 2008-06-05 09:41:03 CEST

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