Trac Backup

Since Trac uses a database backend, some extra care is required to safely create a backup of a project environment. Luckily, trac-admin has a command to make backups easier: hotcopy.

Note: Trac uses the hotcopy nomenclature to match that of Subversion, to make it easier to remember when managing both Trac and Subversion servers.

Creating a Backup

To create a backup of a live TracEnvironment, simply run:

  $ trac-admin /path/to/projenv hotcopy /path/to/backupdir

trac-admin will lock the database while copying.

The resulting backup directory is safe to handle using standard file-based backup tools like tar or dump/restore.

Please, note, that hotcopy command does not overwrite target directory and when such exists, hotcopy ends with error: Command failed: [Errno 17] File exists: This is discussed in trac:ticket:3198.

Restoring a Backup

Backups are simply a copied snapshot of the entire project environment directory, including the SQLite database.

To restore an environment from a backup, simply stop the process running Trac (i.e. the Web server or tracd), restore the directory structure from the backup and restart the service.

Note: Automatic backup of environments that don't use SQLite as database backend is not supported at this time. As a workaround, we recommend that you stop the server, copy the environment directory, and make a backup of the database using whatever mechanism is provided by the database system.

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See also: TracAdmin, TracEnvironment, TracGuide, TracMigrate?