How can I do daily backups for my VisualSVN Repos?

Question

Its on a Windows Server 2003 machine with VisualSVN Server, I was thinking about just doing an xcopy of the folder C:\Repo but I'm not familiar enough with svn to know if that will cause issues.

Should I use dump or hotcopy or both?

http://serverfault.com/a/407493/107134 – bahrep Jul 13 '12 at 14:42 — bahrep, Jul 13 '12 at 14:42

John Gardeniers · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-28T23:05:14.217

7

It's a bunch of files, like any other bunch of files. Use whatever method you use to backup the rest of the system. As this is on a server I would have thought it would already be included in the regular backup scheme.

If you're using half-decent backup software, even Windows own NT Backup, it should be using the Volume Shadow Copy service, which will take care of open file issues, if any.

edited May 28 '10 at 23:05

answered May 27 '10 at 00:39

John Gardeniers

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Did you mean "_like_ any other bunch of files" ? – Tim Long May 28 '10 at 22:03
@Tim Long - Rectified. I think I may have intended to write "not unlike". If you see this sort of thing in my questions or answers please feel free to edit them. – John Gardeniers May 28 '10 at 23:04
Would have edited, but only having a 'mere' 694 rep is not enough to edit. – Tim Long May 29 '10 at 20:42
It may be "a bunch of files" but those files are interdependent and cannot be copied instantaneously. Which could cause a "faulty backup". See my answer for the SVN documented solution. – Byran Zaugg May 31 '10 at 04:07
1

@Bryan, VSS should take care of the interdependence issue because it effectively takes a point in time snapshot prior to the backup. I certainly haven't experienced any issues doing my backups (and test restores) that way. – John Gardeniers May 31 '10 at 04:31
+1 @John, I was not aware VSS did that. Thank you. – Byran Zaugg Jun 01 '10 at 04:18

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 31 '10 at 04:02

Just copying the repo files is a bad idea:

...unless you temporarily disable all other access to your repository, simply doing a recursive directory copy runs the risk of generating a faulty backup.

You should use the The svnadmin hotcopy command.

Repository Maintenance > Repository Backup

You could script this and run it as a scheduled task.

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 23 '13 at 04:43

I do both dump and hotcopy. Put them in a batch file and create a task with Task Scheduler to run it daily. Here is my sample batch file

!backing up credentials
copy H:\Repositories\authz G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\backup
copy H:\Repositories\authz-windows G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\backup
copy H:\Repositories\htpasswd G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\backup

!full dump
svnadmin dump H:\Repositories\Proj1 > G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\dump\Proj1
svnadmin dump H:\Repositories\Proj2 > G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\dump\Proj2 

!hard copy
svnadmin hotcopy H:\Repositories\Proj1 G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\backup\Proj1
svnadmin hotcopy H:\Repositories\Proj2 G:\Repo-Backups\7-22-2013\backup\Proj2

If you have several repositories (projects) to backup and they change frequently it would be easier to have a little program create the above batch file for you. Here is what I've written for this purpose:

    public static void CreateBackupScript(string srcFolder, string desFolder, bool fullDump)
        { 
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(srcFolder) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(desFolder))
            return;

        var dateString = DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString().Replace('/', '-');
        var destination = System.IO.Path.Combine(desFolder, dateString, "backup");

        if (!Directory.Exists(destination))
            Directory.CreateDirectory(destination);

        var source = srcFolder + "\\";
        var outputScript = "backup.cmd";
        using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(outputScript))
        {
            sw.WriteLine("!backing up credentials");
            sw.WriteLine("copy {0}authz {1}", source, destination);
            sw.WriteLine("copy {0}authz-windows {1}", source, destination);
            sw.WriteLine("copy {0}htpasswd {1}", source, destination);

            // dump
            if (fullDump == true)
            {
                sw.WriteLine("!full dump");

                var dumpFolder = System.IO.Path.Combine(desFolder, dateString, "dump");

                if (!Directory.Exists(dumpFolder))
                    Directory.CreateDirectory(dumpFolder);

                foreach (var dir in new DirectoryInfo(source).GetDirectories("*.*", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly))
                {
                    sw.WriteLine(@"svnadmin dump {0} > {1}\{2}", dir.FullName, dumpFolder, dir.Name);
                }
            }

            //hot copy
            sw.WriteLine("!hard copy");
            foreach (var dir in new DirectoryInfo(source).GetDirectories("*.*", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly))
            {
                sw.WriteLine(@"svnadmin hotcopy {0} {1}\{2}", dir.FullName, destination, dir.Name);
            }
        }
    }

+1 - this is very similar to how we back up our SVN repo's – Mark Henderson Jul 23 '13 at 04:50 — Mark Henderson, Jul 23 '13 at 04:50

How can I do daily backups for my VisualSVN Repos?

3 Answers3