This section discusses eXist's database backup/restore procedures. eXist provides different methods for creating backups, which will be explained below. Backups are strongly recommended for data protection in the event you experience a system crash or loss of data. Backups are also very useful for exporting data in order to re-import all or parts of the data to a different database, e.g. while upgrading eXist to a newer version.
Most of the information in this document applies to eXist 1.2.5 and 1.4.0 (or SVN trunk), but there are a few exceptions: eXist 1.2.5 does not support incremental backups and there's no web interface to trigger or view backups.
During backup, eXist exports the contents of its database (as standard XML files) to a hierarchy of directories on the hard drive. This hierarchy is organized according to the organization of collections in the database.
Other files stored during backup include index configuration files and user settings. Resource and collection metadata is exported to a special XML file, called __contents__.xml, which lists information including the resource type, owner, modification date and/or the permissions assigned to a resource. You will find one __contents__.xml file in each directory created by the backup. This descriptor file is required to restore the backup.
Since eXist uses an open XML format rather than a proprietary format for its database files, users can manually modify files in the backup directories without requiring special software. Any changes made to these files are reflected in the database with a restore or once the data is imported to another database system.
It is even possible to directly edit user data and permissions stored in the file /db/system/users.xml. This is particularly useful when making global changes to the user database. For example, to reset the passwords for all your users, you can simply edit the file users.xml by removing the password attribute, or set it to a default value and restore the document.
When migrating to a new eXist version, take care to use a version of the client corresponding to your server version. Usually, the backup process is backwards compatible. However, using a newer client version to create the backup from a server running an older version may sometimes lead to unexpected problems.
There are two main methods for creating a backup:
Client-side |
You can use the Java admin client or a small command line utility to create a backup of the data on the server. In this case, the client controls the backup process. The server is not blocked and continues to accept requests from other clients. Other users can modify the db while the backup is running, so logical dependencies between different resources may not be preserved correctly. Client-side backups are not safe. The client uses the XML:DB API to access the db. This means that it cannot backup documents or collections if they are damaged in any way. |
|---|---|
Server-side |
Server-side backups are usually run through eXist's job scheduler, though they can also be triggered via the web interface. This type of backup extracts the data directly from the low-level database files. It is thus much faster then a client-side backup. It also supports incremental backups. It is guaranteed that the database is in a consistent state while the backup is running. Possible corruptions in the db will be detected and the backup process will try to work around them. In many cases, damaged resources can at least be partially recovered. |
The format of the generated backup archives will be the same for both backup methods. They can all be restored via the standard Java client.
You can either use the Java-based Admin Client, or the backup command line utility.
If you are using the Admin Client, do the following:
Select either the Backup Icon (arrow pointed upward) in the toolbar OR from the menu.
From the drop-down menu, select the collection to backup. To backup the entire database, select /db. Otherwise, select the topmost collection that should be stored. Note, however, that user data and permissions will only be exported if you backup the entire database.
In the Backup-Directory field, enter the full directory path to the where you want the backup database files to be stored or the path to a zip file into which the backup will be written. In general, if the file name ends with .zip, the client will attempt to write to a ZIP. Otherwise, it tries to create the specified directory.
Click OK.
If you are using the command-line utility for the backup/restore, do the following:
To launch the utility, do ONE of the following:
OR enter on the command-line:
To view the all of the available options for this command, use the -h parameter.
Use the -b parameter to indicate the collection path, and the -d parameter to indicate the target directory on your system. You can also specify the current admin username using the -u parameter, and the admin password using the -p parameter. For example, to backup the entire database on a Unix system to the target directory /var/backup/hd060501, you would enter the following:
By default, the utility connects to the database at the URI: xmldb:exist://localhost:8080/exist/xmlrpc. If you want to backup a database at a different location, specify its XML:DB URI (excluding any collection path) using the -ouri parameter. For example, the following backup on a Unix system specifies the database URI xmldb:exist://192.168.1.2:8080/exist/xmlrpc
Default settings for the user, password or server URIs can also be set via the backup.properties file.
This is now the recommended backup method. To guarantee consistency, server-side backups are always executed as system tasks, which means that the database will be switched to a protected service mode before the backup starts. eXist will wait for all pending transactions to complete before it enters protected mode. A database checkpoint will be performed and the backup task is executed. While the system task is running, no new transactions will be allowed. Concurrent requests by other clients will be blocked and added to the internal queue. Once the backup is complete, the database will switch back to normal service and all locks will be released.
You can trigger the backup via the web interface admin client:
eXist 1.2.4 and 1.2.5 do not offer a web interface for backups yet. However, you can schedule the backup or trigger it from an XQuery as described below.
Clicking the button will schedule a single backup task. The server will wait for all running transactions to return before it executes the task. You can click on to update the view, which lists all backup archives currently available within the standard backup directory. Click on the name of an archive to download it.
Beginning with version 1.2.5, eXist can also create incremental backups. Only resources which were modified since the last backup are archived.
All backups will be stored in ZIP format into a directory export/ below the main data directory, which means webapp/WEB-INF/data/export/ by default (unless you configured a different data directory in conf.xml).
The system task runs a consistency and sanity check on the database before backing it up. Reports of this check are written into the same directory as the backup archive. The last report can also be viewed via JMX (see below).
The consistency check will first check the collection hierarchy, then scan through the stored node tree of every document in the db, testing node properties like the node's id, child count, attribute count and node relationships. Contrary to normal database operations, the different dbx files are checked independently. This means that even if a collection is no longer readable, the tool will still be able to scan the documents in the damaged collection.
The backup task uses the information provided by the consistency check to work around damages in the db. It tries to export as much data as possible, even if parts of the collection hierarchy are corrupted or documents are damaged:
The core class for the server-side backup as well as consistency checks is called ConsistencyCheckTask. It can be registered as a system task with eXist's scheduler. To do this, add the following definition to the scheduler section in conf.xml:
<job type="system" class="org.exist.storage.ConsistencyCheckTask"
cron-trigger="0 0 0/12 * * ?">
<!-- the output directory. paths are relative to the data dir -->
<parameter name="output" value="export"/>
<parameter name="backup" value="yes"/>
<parameter name="incremental" value="yes"/>
<parameter name="incremental-check" value="no"/>
</job>This will launch a consistency check and database backup every 12 hours, starting at midnight. The time/frequency of the backup is specified in the cron-trigger attribute. The syntax is borrowed from the Unix cron utility, though there are small differences. Please consult the Quartz documentation about CronTrigger configuration.
The task accepts the following parameters:
output |
The directory to which the backup is written. Relative paths are interpreted relative to eXist's main data directory. |
|---|---|
backup |
Create a full database backup in addition to running the system checks. Setting this to "no" will not create a backup - unless errors were detected during the consistency check! If errors are found, the task will always try to generate an emergency backup. |
incremental |
Created backups will be incremental. Only resources which were modified since the last backup will be saved. The first backup will always be a full backup, subsequent backups will be incremental. Note: you can schedule more than one backup job. For example, an incremental backup could be done multiple times a day while a full backup is created only once during the night |
incremental-check |
By default, no consistency check will be run during an incremental backup. For big databases, the consistency check may take too long, so it should be done for full backups only. Set incremental-check to "yes" to run a consistency check during incremental backups. |
max |
If incremental backups are enabled, create a full backup every max backup runs. If you set the parameter to e.g. 2, you will get a full backup after two incremental backups. |
System jobs can also be triggered from an XQuery using the system:trigger-system-task function defined in the "system" module:
let $params :=
<parameters>
<param name="output" value="export"/>
<param name="backup" value="yes"/>
<param name="incremental" value="yes"/>
</parameters>
return
system:trigger-system-task("org.exist.storage.ConsistencyCheckTask", $params)The function will schedule a backup to be executed as soon as possible.
eXist provides a graphical interface to the consistency check and backup utilities which can be used in case of an emergency, in particular if the database does not start up properly anymore. The tool needs direct access to the database files, so any running database instance has to be stopped before launching the GUI.
Use the following command line to start the utility:
If you installed the eXist distribution using the installer, a shortcut to this should have been placed into the start menu, so you don't need to type above command.
On a headless system you can use the command-line version instead:
Call it with parameter -h to get a list of possible options.
For every check run, an error report will be written into the directory specified in . If you clicked on , the utility will also export the database into a zip file in the same directory. This backup can be restored via the standard backup/restore tools.
If Java Management Extensions (JMX) are enabled in the Java VM that is running eXist, you can use a JMX client to see the latest consistency check reports. The screenshot shows jconsole, which is included with the Java 5 and 6 JDKs.
eXist also includes a command-line JMX client. Call it with parameter -s to see the latest consistency report:
This may produce output as shown below:
You can also subscribe to the notifications made available by the SanityReport MBean to be informed of sanity check results. Please consult the documentation on how to configure JMX.
Restoring from a backup (or parts of it) does not mean that the existing data in the current database instance will be deleted entirely. The restore process will upload the collections and documents contained in the backup. Collections and documents which exist in the database but are not part of the backup will not be modified.
This is a feature, not a bug. It allows us to restore selected parts of the database without touching the rest.
If you really need to restore into a fresh, completely clean database, proceed as follows:
Stop the running eXist database instance
Change into directory EXIST_HOME/webapp/WEB-INF/data or another directory you specified as data directory in the configuration (conf.xml).
Remove all .dbx, .lck and .log files. This means removing all your old data! eXist will recreate those files upon the next restart.
Start eXist again and launch a restore.
To restore the database files from a backup, you can again use either the Admin Client, or the backup command line utility.
For eXist 1.2.x, the restore tool can not directly read from a zipped backup. You have to extract it before restoring. Version 1.4 can handle the zip.
Also, if you experience any issues with bad characters in collection names, use the standard Java jar tool to unpack the zip. Contrary to other zip tools, this utility handles character encodings correctly.
If you are using the Admin Client, do the following:
Select either the Restore Icon (arrow pointed downward) in the toolbar OR from the menu.
The dialog box shown below will then prompt you to select the backup descriptor __contents__.xml from the topmost directory you want restored. To restore the entire database, select the __contents__.xml from the db/ directory.
eXist 1.3 allows to directly select the ZIP archive of a backup.
A second dialog box will then prompt you for an admin password to use for the restore process. This password is required ONLY IF the password of the "admin" user set during the backup differs from the log-in password for the current session. (If you provide an incorrect password, the restore will be aborted.) If the passwords are different, note that restoring the user settings from the backup will cause the current user password to become invalid.
If the restore was accepted, a progress dialog box will display the restored files:
To restore from a backup using the command-line utility, follow the instructions above for launching bin/backup.sh (Unix), OR the bin/backup.bat (Windows/DOS) script files. Include the -r parameter, and the full path of the __contents__.xml file to restore. As with the Admin Client, if the backup uses a different password for the "admin" user than the current session, you must specify the backup password using the -P. For Example: