Transaction support for svnadmin dump command in Subversion / user as which to back an SVN repository

[Ashim Kapoor]

Dear SVN experts,

I am on a Debian linux system.

My fs-type is fsfs.

My svn version is 1.10.4

I am using a project management tool called Redmine which is the front
end for SVN projects and which in turn is relying on Apache as a web
server.

1. I wish to use :

svnadmin dump my-repository > my-repository-backup.dump

on a daily basis at the same time to backup my-repository.

Then I think  that I do *** not *** need to turn off Apache while
doing the above.

Suppose a commit is in process while I am running the above command. I
think SVN supports concurrency as far as commits go. But does SVN
support concurrency while using svnadmin dump? I do not mind losing
out information on that ONE commit since the next day that ONE
particular commit will get dumped into my-repository-backup.dump.
Is there any disadvantage to doing an svndump on a LIVE system ? Will
we experience transaction anomalies if we do this? Is there a way to
setup isolation levels for transactions in Subversion like in
databases?

I do not wish to use svnadmin hotcopy since it's output is not as
portable as svnadmin dump's output. I would need the same filesystem
to restore the svnadmin hotcopy output.

2. Suppose the www-data user is writing to the SVN repositories. My
query is : Should I put the backup cron job into the www-data user's
crontab or the root user's crontab?

My repository is owned by user : www-data and group : root

Many thanks,
Ashim

PS: I am not subscribed to this list so please CC me while responding
to this email.

RE: Enquiry for the trouble to access your link

[Ueda Yuta]

Dear Daniel,

I appreciate your quick response.
I’m grateful for your guidance.

I understand it.

Faithfully yours,

伊藤忠プラスチックス㈱ 情報システム課  /　上田
TEL：050-1748-4167（DialPad直通電話番号）

From: Daniel Sahlberg 
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 2:50 PM
To: 上田 優太(Ueda Yuta) 
Cc: users@subversion.apache.org; 大泉 千日木(Ooizumi Chiaki) 
Subject: Re: Enquiry for the trouble to access your link

Den ons 30 mars 2022 kl 02:15 skrev 上田 優太(Ueda Yuta) 
mailto:yu-u...@itc-ps.co.jp>>:
Dear Daniel,

Thank you very much!
I’ve checked that it worked.

Wery good, thanks for confirmation!


Sorry, but I have some favors to ask you below if you would not mind….

・What purpose should we use this subversion software themselves below?
Download Apache Subversion Sources
Are those what is for the only developers in this field?

Those are if you would like to build Subversion yourself instead of using one 
of the binary packages.

・Is the TortoiseSVN for only the Windows OS users as clients？
　Downloads · TortoiseSVN

Yes, TortoiseSVN is only available on Windows.

Kind regards,
Daniel


Thank you,

伊藤忠プラスチックス㈱ 情報システム課  /　上田
TEL：050-1748-4167（DialPad直通電話番号）

From: Daniel Sahlberg 
mailto:daniel.l.sahlb...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2022 5:17 PM
To: 上田 優太(Ueda Yuta) mailto:yu-u...@itc-ps.co.jp>>
Cc: users@subversion.apache.org; 大泉 
千日木(Ooizumi Chiaki) mailto:c-ooiz...@itc-ps.co.jp>>
Subject: Re: Enquiry for the trouble to access your link

Hi,

Thanks for reporting! I have updated the website, please check if it works for 
you.

Kind regards,
Daniel Sahlberg


Den tis 29 mars 2022 kl 10:05 skrev 上田 優太(Ueda Yuta) 
mailto:yu-u...@itc-ps.co.jp>>:

Dear Sir or Madame,



Hello, my name is Yuta Ueda, who lives in Japan.



There is something I would like to ask.



The software “TortoiseSVN” is not to be installed.

Could you tell us how to install it in detail?



We were trying to get it below, but failed…

https://subversion.apache.org/packages.html



  1.  We selected「TortoiseSVN」below

[cid:image001.png@01D84501.7EF6B190]

  1.  “Not Found”

[cid:image002.png@01D84501.7EF6B190]



Thank you,



＊

伊藤忠プラスチックス株式会社

CIOグループ　情報システム課

上田　優太　（UEDA　YUTA）



〒102-0082東京都千代田区一番町21番地 一番町東急ビル5Ｆ

TEL  　050-1748-4167　（DialPad直通電話番号）

E-mail: yu-u...@itc-ps.co.jp

＊

Re: Transaction support for svnadmin dump command in Subversion / user as which to back an SVN repository

[Mark Phippard]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 5:47 AM Ashim Kapoor  wrote:

> My fs-type is fsfs.
>
> My svn version is 1.10.4
>
> I am using a project management tool called Redmine which is the front
> end for SVN projects and which in turn is relying on Apache as a web
> server.
>
> 1. I wish to use :
>
> svnadmin dump my-repository > my-repository-backup.dump
>
> on a daily basis at the same time to backup my-repository.
>
> Then I think  that I do *** not *** need to turn off Apache while
> doing the above.

Correct.

Subversion is transactional. The dump file might not include commits
that happen after the process begins but it will be a complete
representation of your repository up until whatever the final revision
it records.

> I do not wish to use svnadmin hotcopy since it's output is not as
> portable as svnadmin dump's output. I would need the same filesystem
> to restore the svnadmin hotcopy output.

This is not really true. The fsfs format is portable across all known
versions of SVN. 15+ years ago I even used to use it to transport
repositories between an EBCDIC-based IBM AS/400 and Windows.

The nice thing about hotcopy is that you can now run it against an
existing hotcopy and it will just "catch up". The other nice thing is
that it copies the hook scripts. The restore process is also
significantly faster and easier than a dump file.

What is not nice is that it can copy a partial transaction so you
could have to do some manual recovery to use a backup, It is pretty
easy to do.

The other option to consider is svnsync to a backup, This is harder to
implement but gives best of both worlds. It is transactional, but it
will only do a catch up sync to an existing backup so it is fast. Your
backup is a live repository that you could easily switch to.


> 2. Suppose the www-data user is writing to the SVN repositories. My
> query is : Should I put the backup cron job into the www-data user's
> crontab or the root user's crontab?
>
> My repository is owned by user : www-data and group : root

I would use www-data. No point in using root if you do not need to.
That said, I think you could also use root.

What you should not do is use root to restore the repository. If you
do, then all of the repository files will be owned by root and
unreadable by your server until you run chown.

Mark

Re: Transaction support for svnadmin dump command in Subversion / user as which to back an SVN repository

[Ashim Kapoor]

Dear Mark,

Many thanks for the explanation.

Best Regards,
Ashim

On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 4:45 PM Mark Phippard  wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 5:47 AM Ashim Kapoor  wrote:
>
> > My fs-type is fsfs.
> >
> > My svn version is 1.10.4
> >
> > I am using a project management tool called Redmine which is the front
> > end for SVN projects and which in turn is relying on Apache as a web
> > server.
> >
> > 1. I wish to use :
> >
> > svnadmin dump my-repository > my-repository-backup.dump
> >
> > on a daily basis at the same time to backup my-repository.
> >
> > Then I think  that I do *** not *** need to turn off Apache while
> > doing the above.
>
> Correct.
>
> Subversion is transactional. The dump file might not include commits
> that happen after the process begins but it will be a complete
> representation of your repository up until whatever the final revision
> it records.
>
> > I do not wish to use svnadmin hotcopy since it's output is not as
> > portable as svnadmin dump's output. I would need the same filesystem
> > to restore the svnadmin hotcopy output.
>
> This is not really true. The fsfs format is portable across all known
> versions of SVN. 15+ years ago I even used to use it to transport
> repositories between an EBCDIC-based IBM AS/400 and Windows.
>
> The nice thing about hotcopy is that you can now run it against an
> existing hotcopy and it will just "catch up". The other nice thing is
> that it copies the hook scripts. The restore process is also
> significantly faster and easier than a dump file.
>
> What is not nice is that it can copy a partial transaction so you
> could have to do some manual recovery to use a backup, It is pretty
> easy to do.
>
> The other option to consider is svnsync to a backup, This is harder to
> implement but gives best of both worlds. It is transactional, but it
> will only do a catch up sync to an existing backup so it is fast. Your
> backup is a live repository that you could easily switch to.
>
>
> > 2. Suppose the www-data user is writing to the SVN repositories. My
> > query is : Should I put the backup cron job into the www-data user's
> > crontab or the root user's crontab?
> >
> > My repository is owned by user : www-data and group : root
>
> I would use www-data. No point in using root if you do not need to.
> That said, I think you could also use root.
>
> What you should not do is use root to restore the repository. If you
> do, then all of the repository files will be owned by root and
> unreadable by your server until you run chown.
>
> Mark

A New Feature[:] Film About Subversion

[Daniel Shahaf]

[ Follow-ups to dev@ only, please. ]

Hi, everybody!

As y'all may recall, issue #525 concerns implementing working copies
that need not store an unmodified copy ("pristine", formerly "text-base")
of every versioned file:

https://subversion.apache.org/issue/525

Our currently-envisioned design is documented in what will become
1.15.0's release notes:


https://subversion-staging.apache.org/docs/release-notes/1.15#bare-working-copies

Our development notes are on issue #525's feature branch:


https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/branches/pristines-on-demand-on-mwf/BRANCH-README

One planned change is to add "hydrating" functions to the internal
interlibrary API:


https://github.com/apache/subversion/commit/dbfcd85cd12fe624d2fbb845da24036bb519aa28
(see the changes under subversion/include/private/)

We are also contemplating adding an «svn hydrate» command:


https://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/subversion-dev/202201.mbox/%3C877dapkri1.fsf%40red-bean.com%3E
(for further context, see )

The transition between the non-hydrated state and the hydrated state
will be done via "locks", so we'll be adding another paragraph to this
already-overlong sidebar:


https://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.locking.html#svn.advanced.locking.meanings

We expect the ability to hydrate a working copy will be particularly
useful to users of the third-party client submerge(1):

https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/subcommander/submerge.1.en.html

We have prepared a short film explaining our vision.  A preliminary
Internet Movie Database™ entry is here:

imdb://tt0xC27BF2/
(spoiler: gur yvax vf erny, ohg jr nerag nssvyvngrq jvgu vg;
jr whfg pbhyqag erfvfg gur cha)

It's not yet released, of course, but if you're interested in a preview,
let us know; a small number of beta copies are available.

Cheers,

Daniel

P.S.  Sorry about that github URL.  I would have linked to

(aka ), but both of these URLs just
redirect to that github URL.  (With HTTP 301, too… ☹)  Does anyone else
see this?  Perhaps it's just the EU mirror?  svn.a.o resolves to
13.90.137.153 here.