Re: Tape Backup advice needed - dump, tar etc.
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, J French wrote:
> Hello,
> We are setting up Debian Linux on a new server for a PostGreSQL database. In
> the past, on FreeBSD, I used the dump utility with the live filesystem
> (snapshot) switch to backup the running database. Does dump on linux support
> live filesystem backups as well? How are most people backing up to tape with
> Debian (or linux in general)? I need a robust backup because this will be a
> production server. Advice is appreciated.
> -John
>
These are two distinct questions: getting the data out of postgresql and
getting them onto a tape. The pg_dump script will accept the live flag
under linux as well as freebsd, as far as I know; I would imagine the
worst you might find is that there's some blocking while the data are
written out.
As for putting it onto tape, the simplest is probably just to use tar. You
could script it automatically if you like, as in the below UNTESTED code:
pg_dump -Ft dbname > /dev/nst0
which would dump the tar version of the backup directly to your tape
drive.
ap
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
clists@perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu
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