The xbstream binary overview¶

To support simultaneous compression and streaming, a new custom streaming format called xbstream was introduced to Percona XtraBackup in addition to the TAR format. That was required to overcome some limitations of traditional archive formats such as tar, cpio and others which did not allow streaming dynamically generated files, for example dynamically compressed files. Other advantages of xbstream over traditional streaming/archive format include ability to stream multiple files concurrently (so it is possible to use streaming in the xbstream format together with the –parallel option) and more compact data storage.

This utility has a tar-like interface:

with the -x option it extracts files from the stream read from its standard input to the current directory unless specified otherwise with the -c option. Support for parallel extraction with the --parallel option has been implemented in Percona XtraBackup 2.4.7.
with the -c option it streams files specified on the command line to its standard output.
with the --decrypt=ALGO option specified xbstream will automatically decrypt encrypted files when extracting input stream. Supported values for this option are: AES128, AES192, and AES256. Either --encrypt-key or --encrypt-key-file options must be specified to provide encryption key, but not both.
with the --encrypt-threads option you can specify the number of threads for parallel data encryption. The default value is 1.
the --encrypt-key option is used to specify the encryption key that will be used. It can’t be used with --encrypt-key-file option because they are mutually exclusive.
the --encrypt-key-file option is used to specify the file that contains the encryption key. It can’t be used with --encrypt-key option. because they are mutually exclusive.

The utility also tries to minimize its impact on the OS page cache by using the appropriate posix_fadvise() calls when available.

When compression is enabled with xtrabackup all data is compressed, including the transaction log file and meta data files, using the specified compression algorithm. Read more about supported compression algorithms in the Create a compressed backup document.

Contact us

For free technical help, visit the Percona Community Forum.

To report bugs or submit feature requests, open a JIRA ticket.

For paid support and managed or consulting services , contact Percona Sales.

Last update: 2023-10-26