Hi Jim, We routinely use mysqldump on live wikis. The only consideration is, "Is content likely to change while the dump is happening?" So you could lock the wiki for editing while you dump if you want. Our largest wikis seem to take 30 minutes to dump at most. But then our largest aren't very large, about ten thousand pages. Does that help? -Courtney PS. Don't forget to back up your uploads. -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jim Hu Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 2:51 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: [Mediawiki-l] backup advice wanted Hi all, Having learned the hard way that just doing Retrospect filesystem backups does not always work on the database... I'm looking for advice on how to do backups for our public wikis to minimize downtime when we're doing server maintenance. I've looked at the docs at: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Backup and I'm still a bit confused. Assuming that I'll be using mysqldump... do I need to take the wiki offline during the dump process (the discussion of mysqldump vs mysqlhotcopy seems to be inconsistent with what's at the mysql.com website wrt using hotcopy with InnoDB tables)? Are there any tips people can share? This came up during a migration of /usr/local/mysql and the apache root directory to a new set of disks. I had backed everything up to another set of disks (actually this was temporarily using our dev server as a firewire drive). I pointed usr/local and apache root to the backups in the hope that I could keep the wikis online while we replaced the main disks on the production server. The plan was to keep this running while we set up the new disks and then copy data back to the new disks, change the symlinks for /usr/local etc to the new places, and restart mysql and apache. While this is going on, I've disabled editing on the backup copy, but users should be able to view/ browse/search. But mysql was very unhappy and wouldn't run from the backups. I ended up deleting all of the files from the backup copy of the mysql data directory and rebuilding all the databases in the backup from an SQL dump, with apache turned off for several hours. I feel like there has to be a better way, even with our small operation. Thanks! Jim ===================================== Jim Hu Associate Professor Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics 2128 TAMU Texas A&M Univ. College Station, TX 77843-2128 979-862-4054 _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

This sounds like a good backup solution for my situation too. Dan, any chance I can get a copy of your modified shell script? If so, my address is: mailto:sethile.pipes@gmail.com Hopefully I can figure out how to modify and implement it for our situation too. Thanks, Scott _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

I too would like a copy of this shell script. thanks On Jun 23, 2008, at 12:27 PM, Scott Thile wrote: > This sounds like a good backup solution for my situation too. > > Dan, any chance I can get a copy of your modified shell script? If > so, my address is: > mailto:sethile.pipes@gmail.com > > Hopefully I can figure out how to modify and implement it for our > situation too. > > Thanks, Scott > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jim Hu >> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 10:26 AM >> To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list >> Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] backup advice wanted >> >> >> Thanks. Good to know that this works. >> >> Even though our largest are quite a bit bigger, I decided that this >> would work, esp. if we do it at 1AM. I modified a shell script that

>> Dan Bolser sent me off-list and we're now doing it daily where the >> filename includes the day of the week so we have a rotating set >> going back one week. These get backed up via the regular file >> backup so we should be able to go back further. >> >> Jim >> >> On Jun 23, 2008, at 9:25 AM, Christensen, Courtney wrote: >> >>> Hi Jim, >>> >>> We routinely use mysqldump on live wikis. The only >> consideration is, >>> "Is content likely to change while the dump is happening?" So you >>> could lock the wiki for editing while you dump if you want. Our >>> largest wikis seem to take 30 minutes to dump at most. But then >>> our >> largest aren't >>> very large, about ten thousand pages. >>> >>> Does that help? >>> -Courtney >>> >>> PS. Don't forget to back up your uploads. >>> >>> >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org >>> [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jim >>> Hu >>> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 2:51 AM >>> To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list >>> Subject: [Mediawiki-l] backup advice wanted >>> >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Having learned the hard way that just doing Retrospect filesystem >>> backups does not always work on the database... I'm looking >> for advice >>> on how to do backups for our public wikis to minimize downtime when

>>> we're doing server maintenance. >>> >>> I've looked at the docs at: >>> >>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Backup >>> >>> and I'm still a bit confused. Assuming that I'll be using >> mysqldump... >>> do I need to take the wiki offline during the dump process (the >>> discussion of mysqldump vs mysqlhotcopy seems to be >> inconsistent with >>> what's at the mysql.com website wrt using hotcopy with >> InnoDB tables)? >>> Are there any tips people can share? >>> >>> This came up during a migration of /usr/local/mysql and the apache >>> root directory to a new set of disks. I had backed >> everything up to >>> another set of disks (actually this was temporarily using our dev >>> server as a firewire drive). I pointed usr/local and >> apache root to >>> the backups in the hope that I could keep the wikis online while we

>>> replaced the main disks on the production server. The plan >> was to keep >>> this running while we set up the new disks and then copy >> data back to >>> the new disks, change the symlinks for /usr/local etc to the new >>> places, and restart mysql and apache. While this is going on, I've

_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l