mariadb-backup - A cron-appropriate wrapper for mariabackup

MariaDB provides a backup program, called mariabackup.

That program is well-documented, but does not include a cron wrapper to execute automatically, similar to how automysqlbackup worked.

This is a driver script for cron(8) that will run mariabackup daily or as frequently as once per hour. It can be run from /etc/cron.hourly, /etc/crontab, or root's crontab ... whichever idiom you prefer.

Prerequisites

You need to install MariaDB and MariaDB Backup using your favorite package manager or from source code. I test on the latest CentOS and Ubuntu Linux distributions, but it should be fairly portable. Everything is parametrized script and the configuration file.

The base directory where your backups will go must be created before running the script or it will fail. I use /usr/local/backup/mariadb-backup/ as my base directory but you can change that in the configuration file.

To follow or copy/paste my examples, set the environment variable $EDITOR to your favorite text editor (e.g., export EDITOR='emacs -nw') and then type in my example commands verbatim.

Installation

Clone or download this repository.

You will need sudo privileges or a root shell to install.

1. Create a database user specifically for doing backups. This user will need to be granted many, but not all global privileges in order to create database backups and restore from them. For doing automated backups, you will need to store credentials in a file for this user, so I recommend against using the root user and password.

2. Edit mariadb-backup.my.cnf with the user name and password that was created in Step 1. Copy this file to /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-backup set set permissions to protect the credentials.

   $EDITOR mariadb-backup.my.cnf
   cp mariadb-backup.my.cnf /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-backup.cnf
   chown root:root /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-backup.cnf
   chmod 00600 /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-backup.cnf

3. Edit mariadb-backup.default for your system.

   This is a Bash snippet that contains environment variables that are sourced by the running script. The expected location for this file is in /etc/default/mariadb-backup . If you want your configuration file elsewhere, change the variable MADBB_CONFIG_FILE in the script itself.

   Variables that you may want to change in the default file:

    MADBB_HOURs sets the frequency that backups are run per
    day. This is a string that lists hours, separated by spaces,
    zero-padded, of the hours to make a backup. The default is "06 12
    18" which runs mariabackup at 6 AM, noon and 6 PM in the default
    timezone of your server. The script expects to be executed by one
    of the cron facilities every hour, and then it chooses which hours
    to actually do a backup based on this variable.
   
    MADBB_OPTIONS sets any options that you want to pass to the
    mariabackup executable.
   
    MADBB\_BACKUP_DIR sets where your backups will go. This
    directory must be created and the permissions set before running
    mariabackup for the first time.
   
    MADBB\_PRUNE_DAILY set to 0 will prevent daily pruning of older
    backups.
   
    MADBB\_SAVE_DAYS is an integer of the number of days of backups to
    be kept. Default is 10.
   

   $EDITOR mariadb-backup.default
   cp mariadb-backup.default /etc/default/mariadb-backup
   chown root:root /etc/default/mariadb-backup
   chmod 00644 /etc/default/mariadb-backup

4. You have two choices for installation. You can install the script to a location on your server, such as /usr/local/sbin/mariadb-backup and then call it from an hourly cron entry, or you can drop the script into the /etc/cron.hourly directory. It all depends on how you are most comfortable.

   The script should be run every hour, but backups will only be created in the hours you specify in MADBB_HOURS.

   (a) Copy mariadb-backup to /etc/cron.hourly.

   cp mariadb-backup /etc/cron.hourly/mariadb-backup
   chown root:root /etc/cron.hourly/mariadb-backup
   chmod 00744 /etc/cron.hourly/mariadb-backup

(b) Copy mariadb-backup to somewhere on your server and create a crontab entry in root's crontab or in /etc/crontab

   cp mariadb-backup /usr/local/sbin/mariadb-backup
   chown root:root /usr/local/sbin/mariadb-backup
   chmod 00744 /usr/local/sbin/mariadb-backup

That should do it. The backups will run every hour that you specified in the defaults file. Output will be handled the way that all cron output is handled (see TODO.md).

Support

If you find bugs or make improvements and would like to send me a PR with a note of what you changed and why, I will review it and if appropriate, merge it into the base code, with attribution.

Report issues on the issues tracker on GitHub, or email me : rbj(atsymbol)spotch.com

Release History

v1.0.1 - 2019-01-01

• Added pruning of old backups.
• Renamed the program and repository to mariadb-backup
• Shortened the configuration variable prefix to MADBB_

v1.0.0 - 2018-04-06. Initial release.

Author(s)

• Rob Jenson - Initial author - ferthalangur

License

Copyright (C) 2018-2020 Robert Bryan Jenson  rbj(atsymbol)spotch.com

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.