With all the recent buzz on Planet MySQL about using LVM to perform "semi-hot" backups of MySQL on Linux, I remembered that we once created such a Perl script for a server project that we worked on in cooperation with a hardware vendor. As this particular backup method was also mentioned and recommended in my talk about MySQL backup and security on Linux and the script hasn't actually been publicly available so far, I offered to take over the ownership and release it under the GPL. The first tarball release (0.1) is now available from …

The Google Video for the MySQL Backups presentation stops after about 13 minutes, so I’ve put it up as a download at:

http://www.sheeri.com/movies/2006/BostonMySQLMeetupJanuary-mp4.mov

Many of the questions brought up by the discussion of the summary slide are answered in the presentation.

As always, I encourage feedback — both technical as well as presentational (ie, the slides were not understandable, you talk to fast, etc).

The slides are up at:

http://sheeri.com/presentations/MySQLbackups.swf — 125 Kb flash
or
http://sheeri.com/presentations/MySQLbackups.pdf — 2 Mb PDF

The Boston MySQL Meetup Group was successful yet again! I was a bit worried about my presentation, that it would be too basic or folks would have wanted to see actual code and scripts, but it turned out well.

You may notice that the links at the side (http://www.sheeri.com if you’re reading a feed) include a category called “Presentations”. Currently the December presentation is linked to, direct to Google Video, and the slides from tonight’s meeting are also up in PDF format as well as macromedia flash. And, of course, tonight’s video, thanx to Mike Kruckenberg. Mike also took pictures!

Folks who were at the presentation — feel free to let me know what you thought of it. Folks not at the presentation — feel free to watch the video and let me know what you think. I’m especially interested for those folks …

This article is somewhat long. Interestingly, it does not actually cover my entire talk, as there is much to talk about besides the mechanics of each backup option. I wonder what I’d need to do to make this into a white paper or an article?

The backup presentation was finished last night. I may decide to go back and put some extra stuff in there, but that would be syntax and code and stuff. The logic is all in there, and the notes have been printed. I will post the slides (in .pdf and .swf (flash, the file is very small that way) formats) after the talk on Monday, as I may yet revise them.

I am very excited about one slide in particular, and I’ll share it here. It’s really a slide that I end with, but I feel as though it’s a great starting point as well as a summary point. I haven’t seen this information encapsulated this way before, so here goes:

Comparison Table of MySQL Backup Methods …