[ZDP] FAQ 0.2 - Zope Administration

[Martijn Faassen]

Zope FAQ 0.2 - Zope Administration

* How do you safely do a backup of the Zope database? ('data.bbb' in
  the 'var' directory)

    In Zope 1.10 and later, you can simply back up the
    data.bbb. Because of the way the file written (all write
    operations are appends), it is highly unlikely for a backup file
    created directly to have a problem. If the database is being
    written while the file is being copied, then the Zope may discard
    the last transaction when reading the copy, if the last record is
    incomplete.
 
    Alternatively, you could export the entire site and backup the
    export file. This won't be a full backup however, as it won't
    contain old revisions of objects.

    Yet another alternative is to (mis)use the Pack operation (in the
    Zope Control Panel, database management). Pack will create a
    Data.bbb.old backup copy of your file before packing (for safety),
    which you could then back up. To exploit this side effect you
    could do a pack that says something ridiculous (like pack anything
    older than thousand days).