Backup and Recovery

Overview¶

There are generally two parts of data to backup

Seafile library data
Databases

There are 3 databases:

ccnet_db: contains user and group information
seafile_db: contains library metadata
seahub_db: contains tables used by the web front end (seahub)

Backup steps¶

The backup is a two step procedure:

Backup the databases;
Backup the seafile data directory;

Backup Order: Database First or Data Directory First¶

backup data directory first, SQL later: When you're backing up data directory, some new objects are written and they're not backed up. Those new objects may be referenced in SQL database. So when you restore, some records in the database cannot find its object. So the library is corrupted.
backup SQL first, data directory later: Since you backup database first, all records in the database have valid objects to be referenced. So the libraries won't be corrupted. But new objects written to storage when you're backing up are not referenced by database records. So some libraries are out of date. When you restore, some new data are lost.

The second sequence is better in the sense that it avoids library corruption. Like other backup solutions, some new data can be lost in recovery. There is always a backup window. However, if your storage backup mechanism can finish quickly enough, using the first sequence can retain more data.

We assume your seafile data directory is in /opt/seafile for binary package based deployment (or /opt/seafile-data for docker based deployment). And you want to backup to /backup directory. The /backup can be an NFS or Windows share mount exported by another machine, or just an external disk. You can create a layout similar to the following in /backup directory:

/backup
---- databases/  contains database backup files
---- data/  contains backups of the data directory

Backup and restore for binary package based deployment¶

Backing up Databases¶

It's recommended to backup the database to a separate file each time. Don't overwrite older database backups for at least a week.

MySQL

Assume your database names are ccnet_db, seafile_db and seahub_db. mysqldump automatically locks the tables so you don't need to stop Seafile server when backing up MySQL databases. Since the database tables are usually very small, it won't take long to dump.

mysqldump -h [mysqlhost] -u[username] -p[password] --opt ccnet_db > /backup/databases/ccnet_db.sql.`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S"`

mysqldump -h [mysqlhost] -u[username] -p[password] --opt seafile_db > /backup/databases/seafile_db.sql.`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S"`

mysqldump -h [mysqlhost] -u[username] -p[password] --opt seahub_db > /backup/databases/seahub_db.sql.`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S"`

Backing up Seafile library data¶

The data files are all stored in the /opt/seafile directory, so just back up the whole directory. You can directly copy the whole directory to the backup destination, or you can use rsync to do incremental backup.

To directly copy the whole data directory,

cp -R /opt/seafile /backup/data/seafile-`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S"`

This produces a separate copy of the data directory each time. You can delete older backup copies after a new one is completed.

If you have a lot of data, copying the whole data directory would take long. You can use rsync to do incremental backup.

rsync -az /opt/seafile /backup/data

This command backup the data directory to /backup/data/seafile.

Restore from backup¶

Now supposed your primary seafile server is broken, you're switching to a new machine. Using the backup data to restore your Seafile instance:

Copy /backup/data/seafile to the new machine. Let's assume the seafile deployment location new machine is also /opt/seafile.
Restore the database.
Since database and data are backed up separately, they may become a little inconsistent with each other. To correct the potential inconsistency, run seaf-fsck tool to check data integrity on the new machine. See seaf-fsck documentation.

Restore the databases¶

Now with the latest valid database backup files at hand, you can restore them.

MySQL

mysql -u[username] -p[password] ccnet_db < ccnet_db.sql.2013-10-19-16-00-05
mysql -u[username] -p[password] seafile_db < seafile_db.sql.2013-10-19-16-00-20
mysql -u[username] -p[password] seahub_db < seahub_db.sql.2013-10-19-16-01-05

Backup and restore for Docker based deployment¶

Structure¶

We assume your seafile volumns path is in /opt/seafile-data. And you want to backup to /backup directory.

The data files to be backed up:

/opt/seafile-data/seafile/conf  # configuration files
/opt/seafile-data/seafile/seafile-data # data of seafile
/opt/seafile-data/seafile/seahub-data # data of seahub

Backing up Database¶

# It's recommended to backup the database to a separate file each time. Don't overwrite older database backups for at least a week.
cd /backup/databases
docker exec -it seafile-mysql mysqldump  -u[username] -p[password] --opt ccnet_db > ccnet_db.sql
docker exec -it seafile-mysql mysqldump  -u[username] -p[password] --opt seafile_db > seafile_db.sql
docker exec -it seafile-mysql mysqldump  -u[username] -p[password] --opt seahub_db > seahub_db.sql

Backing up Seafile library data¶

To directly copy the whole data directory¶

cp -R /opt/seafile-data/seafile /backup/data/

Use rsync to do incremental backup¶

rsync -az /opt/seafile-data/seafile /backup/data/

Recovery¶

Restore the databases¶

docker cp /backup/databases/ccnet_db.sql seafile-mysql:/tmp/ccnet_db.sql
docker cp /backup/databases/seafile_db.sql seafile-mysql:/tmp/seafile_db.sql
docker cp /backup/databases/seahub_db.sql seafile-mysql:/tmp/seahub_db.sql

docker exec -it seafile-mysql /bin/sh -c "mysql -u[username] -p[password] ccnet_db < /tmp/ccnet_db.sql"
docker exec -it seafile-mysql /bin/sh -c "mysql -u[username] -p[password] seafile_db < /tmp/seafile_db.sql"
docker exec -it seafile-mysql /bin/sh -c "mysql -u[username] -p[password] seahub_db < /tmp/seahub_db.sql"

Restore the seafile data¶

cp -R /backup/data/* /opt/seafile-data/seafile/