pyxtrabackup is a Python wrapper for the Percona Xtrabackup utility, see official homepage.

The tool is currently in 3.0.0-BETA version and allows to create full backups only.

The features available in the 2.x versions will be added for the 3.0.0 RELEASE version, such as:

• Incremental backups and the associated restoration script
• Streamed backups and the associated restoration script

For now, if you'd like to use these features, I recommend the use of the latest release (2.1.2).

Use pip to install it:

$ pip install --pre pyxtrabackup

This tool can be used to create a backup of a local MySQL server. It will create a a compressed archive and move it into a timestamp named folder in the specified repository.

You will need a MySQL user with the appropriate permissions to create the backup, check the sql folder on the git repository for an example.

Example of use:

$ pyxtrabackup <PATH TO REPOSITORY> --user=<MYSQL USER> [ --password=<MYSQL PASSWORD> ]

Usage in a cron file:

@midnight    mysql    /usr/local/bin/pyxtrabackup /mnt/myrepo --user=backup-user --password=changeme --log-file=/var/log/mysql/pyxtrabackup.log 2>&1

You can also specify the following options:

• --tmp-dir: Specify the temporary directory used by the script. (default: /tmp).
• --log-file: Log file for the script (default: /var/log/pyxtrabackup.log).
• --backup-threads: You can specify more threads in order to backup quicker (default: 1).

The archive is containing a binary backup of a MySQL server, all you need to do in order to restore the backup is to extract the content of the archive in your MySQL datadir, setup the permissions for the files and start your server:

$ sudo rm -rf /path/to/mysql/datadir/*
$ sudo tar xvpzf /path/to/backup_archive.tar.gz -C /path/to/mysql/datadir
$ sudo chown -R mysql:mysql /path/to/mysql/datadir
$ sudo service mysql start

This tool supports the following versions of Percona Xtrabackup:

• 2.2.x

It has been tested on the following OSes:

• Ubuntu 12.04
• Ubuntu 14.04

It has been tested against the following MySQL versions:

• 5.5