Subversion (SVN): How do you set up backup for your Subversion repositories?

18 Replies

Subversion is becoming more and more popular every day. To get quick installation guide, see my post on installing Subversion. Once you have Subversion set up, make sure you have backups of repository setup! This is one of those things most people forget to do. If you followed the installation guide and did source install, you already have a tool available to you. You can find hot-backup.py tool in the tools/backup/ directory of the Subversion source distribution. One thing about this script is that it doesn’t backup all your repositories. Which might be an issue if you create more repositories but forget to create a script to backup that particular repository. Here is a very simple shell script to help you backup all of your subversion repositories. You can edit it to point to different /svn location if you didn’t install to default location. Make sure you copy hot-backup.py to a location which is included in your path so your scripts will work.

mkdir /backups/repos -p
for repostobackup in `ls /svn/` ; do
filename=`basename ${repostobackup}`
if [ ! $filename = "" ]; then
hot-backup.py --archive-type=bz2 /svn/${filename} /backups/repos
fi
done

This will create your backup files and compress them using bzip2. You can also use zip or gz if you prefer. Another thing you should do is to edit the hot-backup.py script and change num_backups to be whatever you think is a good number. I personally use: num_backups = 10

That’s all there is to it. Just add this script to your crons and your backups will be automated. You may want to consider moving your backups to another server by adding ftp, scp or rsync at the end of the script.

18 thoughts on “Subversion (SVN): How do you set up backup for your Subversion repositories?”

  3. Cynthia

    Hi,

    I tried to run the backup script and getting the following error ‘No such file or directory’. Can you please tell me what is wrong with the script? I have the hot-backup.py in the path.

    Output for :./svn_backup.sh
    demo1 demo2
    : No such file or directory

    Script (svn_backup.sh):

    mkdir /backups/repos -p
    for repostobackup in ‘ls /svn/’ ; do
    filename=basename ${repostobackup}
    hot-backup.py –archive-type=bz2 /svn/${filename} /backups/repos
    done

  4. Cynthia

    I am getting same error ‘No such file or directory’ when directly run the hot-backup.py.

    Do I need to make any changes to the hot-backup.py? Or anything wrong with script?

  6. Cynthia

    Yes. I have two demo1 and demo2 which has all the following sub folders:

    /svn/demo1
    /svn/demo2

    When run the following script I get the following output:

    demo1 demo2
    : No such file or directory

    Here is Script:

    mkdir /backups/repos -p
    for repostobackup in ‘ls /svn/’ ; do
    filename=basename ${repostobackup}
    hot-backup.py –archive-type=bz2 /svn/${filename} /backups/repos
    done

  7. Britto I

    Folks:

    I am backing up My SVN Repo through SAMBA Share and using my Tape Driver which is connected to my windows.

    I never checked the “Reliability ” of backup still.

    Is that will work ..

    —-
    Britto

  8. CrazyToon Post author

    As long as you can recover from your backup, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. You should still test the recovery process to make sure if needed, you can recover from disaster.

  10. velmurugan

    Hi,

    i am getting below the error.

    Berkeley DB error for filesystem E:/SubversionRepository/db while opening ‘nodes’ table:No such file or directory.

    How to fix this.please help me.

    Thanks,
    Velmurugan.

  11. Sean

    hello

    i found an error in the script you provided:

    this line: hot-backup.py –archive-type=bz2
    should be: hot-backup.py –archive-type=bz2

    and it will work good

    thank you very much for all the help! this is a very good script!

    btw, anyone can maybe add to the script how to upload those files through ftp?

    thanks

    Sean.

  12. Sean

    ok i see the problem the “-” before the archive-type parameter is adouble minus and not a single 1 as it shows.

    should be “-“”-“archive-type=bz2

    best,

    Sean

  13. Lucas Magasweran

    Thanks for the script, I’ve made some modifications I’d like to share (protect filenames with spaces by using quotes, use of set -e, backup to samba share, modified ls in repository path to only list directories, etc…). This script runs from the cron.daily folder.

    #!/bin/bash
    # Based on http://crazytoon.com/2007/08/16/subversion-svn-how-do-you-set-up-backup-for-your-subversion-repositories/
    # Modified by Lucas Magasweran on 2009/11/02
    #
    # Script to create rotating hotcopy backups of all SVN repositories to a SMB share.

    # Exit if any command returns a non-true value
    set -e
    #set -o errexit

    # Paths, no trailing slash required
    SHARE_PATH=//server/share
    BACKUP_PATH=/mnt/svn-backup
    SVN_REPOS_PATH=/svn/repositories

    # Mount the backup directory
    if [ $(mount | grep -c $BACKUP_PATH) -eq 0 ] ; then
    smbmount $SHARE_PATH $BACKUP_PATH -o user=username,pass=password,dom=DOMAIN || exit 1
    echo “$BACKUP_PATH is now mounted”
    else
    echo “$BACKUP_PATH already mounted”
    fi

    # Perform backup using svn hotcopy backup script
    for repostobackup in `ls -d $SVN_REPOS_PATH/*/` ; do
    filename=`basename “${repostobackup}”`
    if [ ! “$filename” = “” ] ; then
    svn-hot-backup –archive-type=bz2 –num-backups=1 $SVN_REPOS_PATH/”${filename}” $BACKUP_PATH
    fi
    done

    # Un-mount the backup directory
    smbumount $BACKUP_PATH
    if [ $(mount | grep -c $BACKUP_PATH) -eq 0 ] ; then
    echo “$BACKUP_PATH is no longer mounted”
    else
    echo “$BACKUP_PATH is still mounted”
    fi

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