Maintenance of the CaosDB Server

Creating a Backup

In order to create a full backup of CaosDB, the state of the SQL-Backend (MySQL, MariaDB) has to be saved and the internal file system of CaosDB (symbolic links to file systems that are mounted and uploaded files) has to be saved.

You find the documentation on how to backup the SQL-Backend Maintenance

In order to save the file backend we recommend to tar the file system. However, you could use other backup methods that allow to restore the file system. The CaosDB internal file system is located at the path defined by the FILE_SYSTEM_ROOT configuration variable (see Server Configuration).

The command could look like:

tar czvf /path/to/new/backup /path/to/caosdb/filesystem.tar.gz

You can also save the content of CaosDB using XML. This is not recommended since it produces less reproducible results than a plain SQL backup. However there may be cases in which an XML backup is necessary, e.g., when transferring entities between two different CaosDB instances.

Collect the entities that you want to export in a Container, named cont here. Then you can export the XML with:

from caosadvancedtools.export_related import invert_ids
from lxml import etree

invert_ids(cont)
xml = etree.tounicode(cont.to_xml(
    local_serialization=True), pretty_print=True)

with open("caosdb_data.xml"), "w") as fi:
    fi.write(xml)

Restoring a Backup

Warning

CaosDB should be offline before restoring data.

If you want to restore the internal file system, simply replace it. E.g. if your backup is a tarball:

tar xvf /path/to/caosroot.tar.gz

You find the documentation on how to restore the data in the SQL-Backend Maintenance

If you want to restore the entities exported to XML, you can do:

cont = db.Container()
with open("caosdb_data.xml") as fi:
    cont = cont.from_xml(fi.read())
cont.insert()

User Management

The configuration of authentication mechanisms is done via the usersources.ini file (see Server Configuration).

We recommend the Python tools (Administration) for further administrative tasks (e.g. setting user passwords).