xtrabackup failed to write metadata but the backup still succeeded

[Julien Deloubes]

Hello,
using xtrabackup 2.4.4 on ubuntu server 14.04.
I'm trying to do a full backup of my percona DB on a remote machine using tar and extra-lsn-dir
Here is my command:
# innobackupex --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/backup-my.cnf --extra-lsndir=/srv/extrabackup/lsn/ --stream=tar ./ | bzip2 | ssh zabbix-backup@storage "cat - > /srv/backup/full/full.tar.bz2"

When doing this the directory /srv/extrabackup/lsn/ on my local machine is empty.
No file containing the LSN info can be found.
Got the rights permissions on the folder, and log of the backup is saying that it had used the extra-lsn-dir option.

Is it a bug or just a syntax error?

[Sergei Glushchenko (sergei.glushchenko)]

Cannot reproduce with following command:

> innobackupex --extra-lsndir=$topdir/lsn --stream=tar $topdir > /dev/null

> cat $topdir/lsn/xtrabackup_checkpoints

backup_type = full-backuped
from_lsn = 0
to_lsn = 1625987
last_lsn = 1625997
compact = 0
recover_binlog_info = 0

[Julien Deloubes (lienj)]

Hello,
I also tried with your syntax :
 innobackupex --extra-lsndir=$topdir/lsn --stream=tar $topdir > /dev/null
With no errors, the lsn dir has files in it.

But it fails with mine:
# innobackupex --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/backup-my.cnf --extra-lsndir=/srv/extrabackup/lsn/ --stream=tar ./ | bzip2 | ssh zabbix-backup@storage "cat - > /srv/backup/full/full.tar.bz2"

So i guess maybe there is a problem with my defaults-file.

Here is my /etc/mysql/backup-my.cnf
[client]
user=bkpuser
password='password'

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql/
socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port=3306

The mysql bkpuser has the following privileges:
GRANT SUPER,PROCESS,RELOAD, LOCK TABLES, REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.*

Do you see problem with my defaults-file?
Thanks.

[Julien Deloubes (lienj)]

I changed the owner of the extra-lsn-dir to mysql and this works now.
I launch the innobackupex command as root so i figured out that this was not a permission problem.
Problem resolved.

[Sergei Glushchenko (sergei.glushchenko)]

Julien,

I guess you should have notice message like:

xtrabackup: error: xtrabackup_write_metadata() failed.

I will keep this bug report to make xtrabackup fail in this case.

[Sergei Glushchenko (sergei.glushchenko)]

https://github.com/percona/percona-xtrabackup/pull/250
https://github.com/percona/percona-xtrabackup/pull/251

[Shahriyar Rzayev (rzayev-sehriyar)]

Percona now uses JIRA for bug reports so this bug report is migrated to: https://jira.percona.com/browse/PXB-763