Familiarising myself with pgbackrest. Need to make sure this extended service outage isn’t repeated.

@jlj@twt.nfld.uk who not just simply:

pg_dump -F t DB_NAME > /backups/DB_NAME

Of course, using timestamps or something similar in names, and using find, or similar, to keep the backups under control.

@bender@twtxt.net It’s a valid question. I just didn’t do it regularly? I was confused by the different formats? I read conflicting advice about whether things could still be running? Databases, writ large, are a bit of a boogeyman for me? End of the day, so far, this seems to be just enough validation / certification plus automation to get me over the line; seems to be. We shall see.

Tell you what: this demo is just my speed; exactly what I need to get a feel for it, and, more importantly, to build up my confidence.

Anyway, that’s enough for tonight. Daughter’s still poorly, and’ll be up afore the hour’s done, I’m sure. 😪

Same, @jlj@twt.nfld.uk, hope she gets well soon!

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks, both. She was still coughing a lot last night, but she’s been full o’ beans today; already been out to a friend’s party this morning, and showing no signs of slowing down this afternoon. Kids, eh? ;)

[Why] not just simply:
pg_dump -F t DB_NAME > /backups/DB_NAME

Never found a more finicky format than pg_dump. Internet says dump and restore have to be the tools associated with the same release of the database, databases on the same version, of course; think that restore worked? Nah. This is my last hope now (pictured), as the jump from 32-bit to 64-bit means that my pgbackrest backups are ‘corrupt’ outta the gate.

Yeah, that didn’t work, of course: replication just reproduced the data / architecture problem I had with copying the pgbackrest backups over. Back to the drawing board. :/

Latest attempt is using pg_dumpall; that and the restore will be done using 13.9 binaries (for different architectures, of course). Can’t say I’m feeling particularly optimistic…

Well, I’ll be. Didn’t that just sort it. Amazing. matrix.nfld.uk rides again! With a much whizzier, if remote, database. Time to start building back the rest of these database backed services then, eh, @bender@twtxt.net? ;)

@jlj@twt.nfld.uk congratulations! Woot! That was some perseverance there! :-)

@bender@twtxt.net Thanks! :) Learned loads along the way as well, to where I was able to recover another database dump (for a different service) just by changing the locale in the dump file and creating the associated user ahead of the restore.