On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 04:57:16PM -0500, Kirk Strauser wrote: > > The easiest way to snapshot the filesystem is to use a logical volume > > manager (LVM or EVMS on linux) and then do: > > 1. take database offline > > 2. take snapshot > > 3. take database online > > 4. backup from snapshot > > 5. remove snapshot > > I'm on FreeBSD-STABLE right now, so that's unfortunately not an option at > the moment. I'm interested that you include steps #1 and #3, though. On > FreeBSD-CURRENT, the snapshot is atomic. There wouldn't be a need to stop > or restart any services. Is it different on Linux?
Nothing to do with BSD, Linux, or even, Gawd help us, Windows. If you don't take the database offline then the files which make up the database are not guaranteed to be in anything resembling a consistent state i.e. if you copy those files, in whatever manner, there's absolutely no guarantee that you'll be later able to use the database program to read the files. If your environment is such that taking the database offline is unacceptable then use must use the database's own utilities to dump the database into some form which may be backed up. Kindest regards, Niall O Broin
