Use Holland and Cloud Backup to back up MySQL databases

This article describes how to back up MySQL® databases on the Ubuntu® operating system by using Holland and Cloud Backup.

Install Holland

1. Get the release key for Holland by running the following command:

   wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/holland-backup/xUbuntu_XX.XX/Release.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
   

   Note: Replace xUbuntu_XX.XX with the version of the Ubuntu operating system that you are using. For example, for Ubuntu 13.04, use
   xUbuntu_13.04.

2. Open the list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/holland.list in a text editor and add the following line:

   deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/holland-backup/xUbuntu_XX.XX/ ./
   

   Note: Replace xUbuntu_XX.XX with the version of the Ubuntu operating system that you are using.

   Save and close the file.

3. Run the following commands to update and install Holland:

   apt-get update
   apt-get install holland-common holland-mysqldump

Configure Holland

Before you configure Holland for your backups, ensure that you have a .my.cnf file in your /root/ directory.
If you don't have that file, create one and enter the following information:

 [client]

  user=root

  password=yourpasswordhere

The default location for your backups is /var/spool/holland. If you want to store your backups in a different
location, open the /etc/holland/holland.conf file in a text editor and edit the following line:

backup_directory = /var/spool/holland

Holland stores only one backup in the backup directory by default. If you want to have multiple backups in your backup
directory, open the /etc/holland/backupsets/default file in a text editor and edit the following line:

backups-to-keep = 1

To ensure that all of your configuration settings are correct, run the following command:

holland bk

Your Holland backup directory should now look similar to the following example:

total 12
  drwxrwx--- 3 root root 4096 Sep 29 19:37 .
  drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Sep 29 19:08 ..
  drwxrwx--- 3 root root 4096 Sep 29 19:37 20130929_193720
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   42 Sep 29 19:37 newest -> /var/spool/holland/default/20130929_193720
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   42 Sep 29 19:37 oldest -> /var/spool/holland/default/20130929_193720

Schedule Holland backups

You can use Holland to schedule regular backups of your database. To do so, open the /etc/crontab file and add a new
cron job. The following example tells Holland to run a backup every day at 3:00 am:

0 3 * * * root holland bk

The following syntax forms a cron job:

Minute(0-59) Hour(0-24) Day_of_month(1-31) Month(1-12) Day_of_week(0-6) Command_to_execute

You can set your scheduled backup to run as frequently as you want.

Back up Holland by using Cloud Backup

For instructions about how to back up your Holland backup files to Rackspace Cloud Backup, see
Create a backup.