On Mon, 1 Oct 2012, Craig White wrote:
> On Oct 1, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Tim Dunphy wrote:
>
>> I am soliciting opinion here as opposed technical help with an idea
>> I have. I've setup a bacula backup system on an AWS volume. Bacula
>> stores a LOT of information in it's mysql database (in my setup,
>> you can also use postgres or sqlite if you chose). Since I've
>> started doing this I notice that the mysql data directory has
>> swelled to over 700GB! That's quite a lot and its' easting up
>> valuable disk space.
> I use Bacula and I prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL but regardless… the
> database grows as the number of files that are backed up (without
> purges) grows. Thus you should probably be considering some type of
> rotation which regularly purges old backups on a regular basis.
There are two other things you can do, assuming you have time windows
between backups:
1. Run Bacula's dbcheck utility in fix (-f) mode. My observation is
that even with regular pruning, Bacula won't get all the kruft
out of the MySQL tables. dbcheck is more thorough.
2. Every one once in a while -- again, assuming you have a big
enough time window -- it can be useful to run mysqlcheck in
optimize (-o) mode against the Bacula database. Doing so
cleans up the MySQL data files and can free up a lot of
space in your filesystem.
Read the man pages before embarking on these operations and make sure
you have a known-good copy of the database in case mischief ensues
(which has never happened to me, but it's always a possibility).
--
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W