5.1 Performing a Restore Operation

The mysqlbackup commands to perform a restore operation are copy-back-and-apply-log and copy-back (for directory backup only; see Section 5.1.7, “Advanced: Preparing and Restoring a Directory Backup”). Normally, the restoration process requires the database server to be already shut down (or, at least not operating on the directory you are restoring the data to), except for a partial restore. The process copies the data files, logs, and other backed-up files from the backup directory back to their original locations, and performs any required post-processing on them.

Example 5.1 Restoring a Database Server

mysqlbackup --defaults-file=<my.cnf> -uroot --backup-image=<image_name> \
  --backup-dir=<backupTmpDir> --datadir=<restoreDir> copy-back-and-apply-log

The copy-back-and-apply-log command achieves two things:

  • Extracts the backup from the image file and copies it to the data directory on the server to be restored.

  • Performs an apply log operation to the restored data to bring them up-to-date.

See Section 4.2.4, “Restoring a Database” for an explanation of the important options used in a restore operation like --defaults-file, --datadir, --backup-image, and --backup-dir.

The restored data includes the backup_history table, where MySQL Enterprise Backup records details of each backup. The table allows you to perform future incremental backups using the --incremental-base=history:{last_backup | last_full_backup} option.

Important
  • When performing a restore, make sure the target directories for restore data are all clean, containing no old or unwanted data files (this might require manual removal of files at the locations specified by the --datadir, --innodb_data_home_dir, --innodb_log_group_home_dir, and --innodb_undo_directory options). The same cleanup is not required for partial restores, for which other requirements described in Section 5.1.4, “Table-Level Recovery (TLR)” apply.

  • After a full restore, depending on how you are going to start the restored server, you might need to adjust the ownership of the restored data directory. For example, if the server is going to be started by the user mysql, use the following command to change the owner attribute of the data directory and the files under it to the mysql user, and the group attribute to the mysql group.

    $ chown -R mysql:mysql /path/to/datadir

The following subsections describe a number of different scenarios for restoring a backup.