[rt-users] Backing up RT

[Konstantin Khomoutov]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 06:27:24PM -0600, Max McGrath wrote:

> *I run a nightly dump as root:
> 
> mysqldump --opt rt3 -u root -p > rt3.sql
>  (assuming the root user can perform that dump)
> 
> Then scp the file to another system.
> 
> Since the rest of the system doesn't change much, I don't bother with much
> of anything else.  I have a snapshot of the whole system (my RTs are VMs
> under VirtualBox, so they're easy to backup (single file)).*
> *
> *
> This is exactly what I do.  Is this a decent way to be doing it -- I've
> always just assumed it was okay.  I do it hourly, and then SCP it to another
> system.
> 
> Should I be stopping mysql or anything  before doing the mysqldump?
"--opt" locks all the tables in a given database before backing it up so
that only reads can be done on it. This is for MyISAM engine, for
engines supporting ACID there's more effective option available --
bother to read mysqldump man page.

If you think preventing read access to the db during backup affects the
RT performance (but you should really measure the dump time first),
you can look at mysqlhotcopy script (MyISAM only) which trades speed for
disk space.