Backup meta files appeared after latest upgrade to v.66

jndawson

• July 27, 2017 12:41

We backup all of our servers to a remote server - it works great. Yesterday, after we upgraded to v.66 the day before, we noticed our nightly backups included some changes. Rather than store all files in a single directory, there are now an accounts and a system directory under the weekly backup tree, and each account file has a related meta file Last week's backup:
[ root@bu1 ~># ls -lh /home/cp4/weekly/2017-07-19 /home/cp4/weekly/2017-07-12: total 12G -rw-------. 1 backup backup 2.0M Jul 12 02:42 acustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 1.8G Jul 12 02:41 bcustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 70M Jul 12 02:36 ccustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 32K Jul 12 02:27 ecustomer.tar.gz
...and so on. Last night's backup:
[ root@bu1 ~># ls -lh /home/cp4/weekly/2017-07-26/accounts total 12G -rw-------. 1 backup backup 78K Jul 26 02:49 acustomer-=-meta -rw-------. 1 backup backup 2.1M Jul 26 02:49 acustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 773K Jul 26 02:21 bcustomer-=-meta -rw-------. 1 backup backup 278M Jul 26 02:21 bcustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 6.9M Jul 26 02:48 ccustomer-=-meta -rw-------. 1 backup backup 1.8G Jul 26 02:47 ccustomer.tar.gz -rw-------. 1 backup backup 80K Jul 26 02:03 ecustomer-=-meta -rw-------. 1 backup backup 70M Jul 26 02:03 ecustomer.tar.gz
...and so on. (note - the fake customer names aren't a one-to-one match between last week and this week, hence the file size discrepancy) Questions: 1. What are the meta files used for? 2. During account restoration, are they required to be moved back to the active server along with the gzipped account files? 3. If unnecessary, can they be deleted?

• 

  cPanelMichael

  • July 28, 2017 14:50

  Hi @jndawson, The implementation of metadata for backups in cPanel 66 allows for an easier way to see information about the backup archive, and to easily search for files included in the backup archive. It also lays the ground work for features like this: cPanel user Granular backup/restore Here's more information about this change from the documentation.
  The metadata files are not required to restore an archive, but I recommend keeping them to allow for compatibility with future functionality. Thank you.

  0
• 

  jndawson

  • July 28, 2017 17:16

  The implementation of metadata for backups in cPanel 66 allows for an easier way to see information about the backup archive, and to easily search for files included in the backup archive. It also lays the ground work for features like this: ...

  
  Thanks. We knew that was coming, suspected that was the case, saw the change log, but didn't see the note in the release notes.

  0

Please sign in to leave a comment.