Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is successfully ornot ? - Mailing list pgsql-performance

The best way to ensure good backups is to establish a regular practice of restoring a backup to another database.  The easiest such practice to justify and implement is to maintain a developer/development database, and to use your production database backups to rebuild it on a regular basis.  Other approaches could include regularly scheduled Disaster Recovery exercises, or simply spinning up throw away cloud instances for the purpose.

pg_dump uses the ordinary postgresql COPY command to extract data from the tables.  Beyond that, I'm not sure how it works.  Sorry I can't help you there.

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 7:05 AM, Dinesh Chandra 12108 <Dinesh.Chandra@cyient.com> wrote:

Hi,

When I issue the bleow command
  > ./bin >pg_dump -U dummy_user  dummy_database; echo $?

I checked with Linux TOP command on the same server, it was showing COPY database.
What exactly it doing ??

Regards,
Dinesh Chandra

-----Original Message-----
From: vinny [mailto:vinny@xs4all.nl]
Sent: 27 February, 2017 7:31 PM
To: John Gorman <jgorman@eldocomp.com>
Cc: Rick Otten <rottenwindfish@gmail.com>; Dinesh Chandra 12108 <Dinesh.Chandra@cyient.com>; pgsql-performance@postgresql.org; pgsql-performance-owner@postgresql.org

Subject: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is successfully or not ?

On 2017-02-27 14:29, John Gorman wrote:
> Even though it's not listed in any of the documentation or “pg_dump
> --help” you can check the return code of the process. A return code
> greater than 0 (zero) usually indicates a failure
>
> ./bin >pg_dump -U dummy_user  dummy_database; echo $?
>
> 1
>
> FROM: pgsql-performance-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-performance-owner@postgresql.org] ON BEHALF OF Rick
> Otten
> SENT: Monday, February 27, 2017 3:36 AM
> TO: Dinesh Chandra 12108
> CC: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
> SUBJECT: Re: [PERFORM] How Can I check PostgreSQL backup is
> successfully or not ?
>
> Although it doesn't really tell if the pg_dump was successful (you'll
> need to do a full restore to be sure), I generate an archive list.  If
> that fails, the backup clearly wasn't successful, and if it succeeds,
> odds are pretty good that it worked:
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 4:35 AM, Dinesh Chandra 12108
> <Dinesh.Chandra@cyient.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> We are taking daily full backup of PostgreSQL database using PG_DUMP
> which is automatic scheduled through Cronjobs.
>
> How can I check my yesterday backup is successfully or not?
>
> Is there any query or view by which I can check it?
>
> REGARDS,
>
> DINESH CHANDRA
>
> |DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR (ORACLE/POSTGRESQL)| CYIENT LTD. NOIDA.


It's important to note the distinction between

"the backup process did not fail"

and

"we now have a trustworthy backup"

And you can go full-paranoia and say that you can successfully create a perfectly working backup of the wrong database.

So what is it that you want to make sure of:
1. Did the process give an error?
2. Did the process create a usable backup?

What are the chances of #1 reporting success but still producing a bad backup?
And can #2 fail on a good database, and if so, can you detect that?

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