Q: Backup verification (Wiki)

Hello,

You might find all the answers you need in this documentation:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5082?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I hope this helps !

This documentation is very interesting. How did you find it?

Before testing it I have a number of questions making some conclusions which can be wrong.

1. Making a backup with time machine or a unix command when the wiki is running will be useless as this backup cannot be used to restore the complete wiki or only parts of the wiki?

2. Will a backup with time machine or a unix command work if the wiki is down? Is the database used for other functionality and therefore still up and running?

3. The backup process has to include the dump of the database as described in the document?

4. The complete wiki needs to be restored on a separate server to be able to retrieve individual attachments or parts of the text in a wiki document. A manual copy and past is then necessary. Is this right or wrong?

5. Is there any way to get the content of the wiki from a unix command backup?

6. Is there any documentation that explains how to restore wiki data and other shared data like addresses and ical data?

Without answers on these questions it is very dangerous to continue to use the wiki so I hope there is some good documentation. Personally I have looked for it on the internet and bought two books without finding any.

Are there any wiki masters out there that can share their experiances?

Thanks

Hello Macservink,

sorry for answering so late! I do not have "clear" answer to all your questions but I'll do my best

0.

I just can't remember how I found the documentation. Most certainly googling using an error message found in the console. I certainly did bookmarked this link ;-)

1.

My opinion is that Time Machine is useless for backuping a server. It does a decent for a standalone personal machine. But not for a server. Finding a good backup strategy probably was one of the most complicated problem I had to solve when I first set up the server of our small company. The only choices I considered were to use either home-made scripts or an external software. We gave many (commercial) software a try. None of them were very convincing, especially because I like to *see* what is backuped exactly just by navigating through the directories of the backup hard drive. Then we found it: Carbon Copy Cloner (or CCC). At that time, CCC was free but this is not the case anymore. Yet, you should definitely take a look at it. There must be a trial version. If you don't like it, my advice is to use your own scripts and to make sure you can recover a backup ;-)

Concerning backuping the wiki: CCC will allow you to "clone" you system, i.e., it will clone the whole system partition. This includes Open Directory users, DNS settings, databases, etc. Assuming you do not want to backup up the whole thing, but just the wiki for examples, you should be aware that backuping just the wiki pages might be useless if you don't have a proper backup of the OD users who created those pages. As far as I understand, any post in the wiki is associated with the UID of the user who made the post. It is not clear to me what happens exactly if you try to recover all the wiki pages on a server which does not have the same OD user/group database. My advice is: you should at least backup the OD users and groups database. If you can, backup backup each user individually. You should be able to do so by scripting this backup. The command 'dsexport' will certainly be useful.

2.

Although I did not try this, I believe that even if the wiki is down (e.g. because you simply turned it off yourself), you can backup it. Actually, it is probably even better to turn the wiki down during the backup (what if a user changes anything on the wiki during the backup process ?). The wiki pages actually are database entries (if I remember correctly, they used to be flat files in previous versions of OS X, but this is not the case anymore). This complicates the backup scripts but, base on the Apple documentation (see my post above), you should be fine. Last but not least, do not forget to also backup the directory containing all the wiki file "attachment".

3.

Yes the backup process should first make a dump of the database, and then backup this dump file. It should also backup all the wiki file attachment (in /Library/Server/Wiki/FileData). And, as I explained above, it might be wise to also backup the OD users and groups using the 'dsexport' command. Once you have set a backup strategy up, try to see if you are able to recover the whole thing, e.g., by setting up a new server on which you will restore the users, the groups, and, only then, the wiki and associated files.

4.

Given the fact that all the wiki entries are database entries, it should be possible to extract individual entries. But that would require to know how the database tables look. You can certainly dive in the databases using postgres command line tools, but this will certainly be hard work and error prone. I simply do not have enough experience with that matter to give you a proper advice ;-)

5.

The pg_dump command from Apple documentation mentioned above should do the trick. And do not forget the wiki files, the OD users,groups (I like repeating myself).

6.

As far as I know, the documentation mentioned above is the only official one that gives a few hints about how to backup wiki. There is nothing similar for calendars nor for reminders. I wish there was ! I actually asked the question myself on these lists but did not get any answer from the community (which is a bad sign) :

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19555142#19555142

Good luck !