Re: Creating and Verifying a Reliable backup

Hello Michael,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 7:18 PM, Michael Schwager <mschwage_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Yessity-yes-yes-yessss!!!!! svnadmin freeze- I missed that one! That's
> something I can really sink my teeth into! Awesome, thanks!
>
> My intention is to perform the following:
> * shut down httpd
> Then, for each repoX:
> * svnadmin verify /home/svn/hotcopy/repoX. If error, warn and exit.
> * svnadmin hotcopy into /home/svn/hotcopy/repoX. If error, warn and exit.
> * svnadmin verify /home/svn/hotcopy/repoX. If error, warn and exit.

These steps don't require you to shut down httpd.

> * svnadmin freeze /path/to/repoX -- rsync -av /path/to/repoX
> /home/svn/rsync/repoX.
> * rsync -c -n -av /path/to/repoX /home/svn/rsync/repoX. (perform a checksum
> compare) If error, warn and exit.

Why don't you run `rsync` on "/home/svn/hotcopy/repoX"?

You won't need to shut down httpd or run `svnadmin freeze` in such
case.

> I had considered svnadmin dump, but according to the Wisdom on Serverfault,
> "[svnadmin dump] also fails to backup things like the repository scripts and
> a few other things..."
> (http://serverfault.com/questions/540214/is-it-necessary-to-do-an-svnadmin-dump-to-backup-subversion)

Yep, this is right. Subversion repository dump streams (the dump
generated by `svnadmin dump` or `svnrdump`) contain versioned history
only. Read SVNBook[1].

> "One other thing to watch is svnadmin dump doesn't backup locks and hook
> scripts."
> http://serverfault.com/questions/52252/best-way-to-do-subversion-backups?rq=1
>
> ...I've always presumed this meant that the hotcopy did back up locks and
> hook scripts...

Yes, hotcopy makes full repository copy with locks and hook scripts.
Read SVNBook[2].

[1]: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.8/svn.reposadmin.maint.html#svn.reposadmin.maint.migrate
[2]: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.8/svn.reposadmin.maint.html#svn.reposadmin.maint.backup

--
With best regards,
Pavel Lyalyakin
VisualSVN Team