ec2-consistent-snapshot on GitHub and v0.43 Released

| 6 Comments

The source for ec2-conssitent-snapshot has historically been available here:

ec2-consistent-snapshot on Launchpad.net using Bazaar

For your convenience, it is now also available here:

ec2-consistent-snapshot on GitHub using Git

You are welcome to fork ec2-consistent snapshot under the liberal terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.

I welcome patch submissions, especially if:

  1. The patch accomplishes a single enhancement or bug fix, changing as little as possible to accomplish the goals, while still performing appropriate error checks.

  2. The patch includes relevant updates to the documentation.

  3. The patch does not add functionality outside of the narrow goal of ec2-consistent-snapshot (initiate EBS snapshots with consistent filesystems and application data).

  4. The patch is created against the latest version of the source.

I also recommend submitting a bug/feature in Launchpad.net to track adding the patch to ec2-consistent-snapshot:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ec2-consistent-snapshot/+filebug

Not all patches will be accepted, but you are encouraged to maintain forks on GitHub so that others can include your patches if they find them useful.

New Release

Two user-contributed patches have been incorporated (with minor adjustments) into ec2-consistent-snapshot with the latest release of version 0.43:

  1. Ability to freeze multiple file systems by specifying —freeze-filesystem multiple times (thanks to Bobb Crosbie).

  2. Ability to specify commands to run just before freezing the file system(s) and just after thawing the file systems (thanks to Craig Tracey).

The new release of ec2-consistent-snapshot is available in the Alestic PPA for easy installation and upgrading in Ubuntu. You can install it on Ubuntu using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alestic &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install -y ec2-consistent-snapshot

ec2-consistent-snapshot is usable on other Linux distros as long as you install dependencies like xfsprogs, perl, libnet-amazon-ec2-perl, libfile-slurp-perl, libwww-perl, libdigest-hmac-perl, libparams-validate-perl, libxml-simple-perl, libmoose-perl, libcrypt-ssleay-perl.

6 Comments

Really excited about the "Ability to specify commands to run just before freezing the file system", I didn't realise this had been added. I presume this makes it possible to run a script that'd support consistent snapshots of other database types like MongoDB. I know there was a fork of ec2-consistent-snapshot that supported MongoDB but the script route seems more maintainable.

I know you mentioned your desire to keep this script tight but do you have any interest in making the database functionality pluggable so we could swap out mysql to support a different DB and still provide command line parameters that relate to that DB?

Is there a means to get libnet-amazon-ec2-perl installed in Hardy 8.04? apt-get returns that E: Package libnet-amazon-ec2-perl has no installation candidate.

mosx86:

Scroll down to the "INSTALLATION" section of the manpage here:

https://github.com/alestic/ec2-consistent-snapshot

There are special instructions for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy.

Note, however, that ec2-consistent-snapshot is no longer being upgraded for Hardy in the Alestic PPA.

bannistered:

The pre/post commands were added by Craig Tracey.

I'd be happy to review patches for pluggable database support or for specific databases.

I had this working when I was using it inside standard EC2, when I moved to VPC the snapshots stopped. I have the instance is inside a public subnet with an EIP assigned to it, what more should I be doing so that the snapshots work from within VPC ?

dhawalparkar:

There is insufficient information in your question for me to diagnose the issue. I'd recommend asking your question on serverfault.com, providing more details on what you are running and what the error messages are.

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