Frequently asked questions¶

Does Percona XtraBackup 8.0 support taking backups of databases in versions prior to 8.0?¶

Percona XtraBackup 8.0 does not support making backups of databases created in versions prior to 8.0 of MySQL, Percona Server for MySQL or Percona XtraDB Cluster. As the changes that MySQL 8.0 introduced in data dictionaries, redo log and undo log are incompatible with previous versions, it is currently impossible for Percona XtraBackup 8.0 to also support versions prior to 8.0.

Due to changes in MySQL 8.0.20 released by Oracle at the end of April 2020, Percona XtraBackup 8.0, up to version 8.0.11, is not compatible with MySQL version 8.0.20 or higher, or Percona products that are based on it: Percona Server for MySQL and Percona XtraDB Cluster.

For more information, see Percona XtraBackup 8.x and MySQL 8.0.20

Does Percona XtraBackup 8.0 support taking backups of databases in higher versions within the 8.0 series?¶

Yes, starting with Percona XtraBackup 8.0.34, you can back up MySQL-compatible databases of higher versions within the 8.0 series.

Check the latest list of all Supported versions.

Does Percona XtraBackup 8.0 support taking backups of databases in lower versions within the 8.0 series?¶

Yes, if you use Percona XtraBackup 8.0.35 or higher, you can back up MySQL-compatible databases starting from version 8.0.34 or higher.

Check the latest list of all Supported versions.

Why will `innobackupex` not run in Percona XtraBackup 8.0?¶

innobackupex has been removed from Percona XtraBackup 8.0 in favor of xtrabackup.

Are you aware of any web-based backup management tools (commercial or not) built around Percona XtraBackup?¶

Zmanda Recovery Manager is a commercial tool that uses Percona XtraBackup for Non-Blocking Backups:

“ZRM provides support for non-blocking backups of MySQL using Percona XtraBackup. ZRM with *Percona XtraBackup provides resource utilization management by providing throttling based on the number of IO operations per second. Percona XtraBackup based backups also allow for table level recovery even though the backup was done at the database level (needs the recovery database server to be Percona Server for MySQL with XtraDB).”*

xtrabackup binary fails with a floating point exception¶

In most of the cases this is due to not having installed the required libraries (and version) by xtrabackup. Installing the GCC suite with the supporting libraries and recompiling xtrabackup solves the issue. See Compiling and Installing from Source Code for instructions on the procedure.

How xtrabackup handles the ibdata/ib_log files on restore if they aren’t in mysql datadir?¶

In case the ibdata and ib_log files are located in different directories outside the datadir, you will have to put them in their proper place after the logs have been applied.

Backup fails with Error 24: ‘Too many open files’¶

This usually happens when database being backed up contains large amount of files and Percona XtraBackup can’t open all of them to create a successful backup. In order to avoid this error the operating system should be configured appropriately so that Percona XtraBackup can open all its files. On Linux, this can be done with the ulimit command for specific backup session or by editing the /etc/security/limits.conf to change it globally (NOTE: the maximum possible value that can be set up is 1048576 which is a hard-coded constant in the Linux kernel).

How to deal with skipping of redo logs for DDL operations?¶

To prevent creating corrupted backups when running DDL operations, Percona XtraBackup aborts if it detects that redo logging is disabled. In this case, the following error is printed:

[FATAL] InnoDB: An optimized (without redo logging) DDL operation has been performed. All modified pages may not have been flushed to the disk yet.
Percona XtraBackup will not be able to take a consistent backup. Retry the backup operation.

Note

Redo logging is disabled during a sorted index build. To avoid this error, Percona XtraBackup can use metadata locks on tables while they are copied:

To block all DDL operations, use the --lock-ddl option that issues LOCK TABLES FOR BACKUP.
If LOCK TABLES FOR BACKUP is not supported, you can block DDL for each table before XtraBackup starts to copy it and until the backup is completed using the --lock-ddl-per-table option.