Suggested improvements to discourse backup format

sam · January 8, 2018, 5:41am

We are double compressing database:

First time at:

discourse/discourse/blob/main/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb#L188


      
          
          password_argument = "PGPASSWORD='#{db_conf.password}'" if db_conf.password.present?
          host_argument = "--host=#{db_conf.host}" if db_conf.host.present?
          port_argument = "--port=#{db_conf.port}" if db_conf.port.present?
          username_argument = "--username=#{db_conf.username}" if db_conf.username.present?
          
          [
            password_argument, # pass the password to pg_dump (if any)
            "pg_dump", # the pg_dump command
            "--schema=public", # only public schema
            "-T public.pg_*", # exclude tables and views whose name starts with "pg_"
            "--file='#{@dump_filename}'", # output to the dump.sql file
            "--no-owner", # do not output commands to set ownership of objects
            "--no-privileges", # prevent dumping of access privileges
            "--verbose", # specifies verbose mode
            "--compress=4", # Compression level of 4
            host_argument, # the hostname to connect to (if any)
            port_argument, # the port to connect to (if any)
            username_argument, # the username to connect as (if any)
            db_conf.database, # the name of the database to dump
          ].join(" ")

Second time at:

github.com

discourse/discourse/blob/main/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb#L244


      
          
          log "Archiving data dump..."
          Discourse::Utils.execute_command(
            "tar",
            "--append",
            "--dereference",
            "--file",
            tar_filename,
            File.basename(@dump_filename),
            failure_message: "Failed to archive data dump.",
            chdir: File.dirname(@dump_filename),
          )
          
          add_local_uploads_to_archive(tar_filename)
          add_remote_uploads_to_archive(tar_filename) if SiteSetting.Upload.enable_s3_uploads
          
          remove_tmp_directory
          
          log "Gzipping archive, this may take a while..."
          Discourse::Utils.execute_command(
            "gzip",

Instead this really should be a simple “tar file”, with the db added to it and then a bundle of compressed files.

backup.tar

- metadata
- database.compressed
- uploads_folder.compressed

This makes it ultra cheap to read metadata (since its at the head of the tar file) and means we also stop the double compression of database.

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Suggested improvements to discourse backup format

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