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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Hello,</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">I’m in the process of upgrading our LON-CAPA servers (new OS, new LON-CAPA version) and while I’m at it, I decided it’s long past time to modernize our backup strategy. To
that end, I’m implementing a system using a bacula server and lvm snapshots.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">For many services, it’s recommended to stop the service to flush any filesystem writes before taking the snapshot. This ensures that the system isn’t backed up in an inconsistent
state. My current script does this by issuing a stop command (service loncapa stop), taking the snapshot and restarting loncapa (loncapa start). At that point the backup is made of the snapshot with only a very short downtime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">My questions are: (a) is there a better way to flush any pending loncapa filesystem writes? Bringing the service down & up does mean a few minutes of unavailability that I’d
like to trim and (b) is there any danger to this practice that I haven’t considered?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Thank you for sharing any insights you might have,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Cheers,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Michael Dugdale<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Physics Department<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">John Abbott College
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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