Title: How do I Back Up and Restore Traction TeamPage?

We designed Traction TeamPage to be very simple to back up. The exact procedure that you employ will vary between operating systems, but the same general principals apply:

• All data is stored in files in the filesystem, so standard filesystem backup methods work for TeamPage.

• You can back up a running TeamPage system, provided that your back system can backup open files and that you rebuild indexes when you restore.

• To move your TeamPage software to different hardware, see Customer267: How do I move a Traction TeamPage Installation to a different computer?

Backing Up

All Platforms

The following questions and answers apply to all platforms.

What needs to be backed up?

Generally speaking, in order to safeguard all of your data and simplify restores you need to back up your Installation folder and your Journal folder.

• The Journal folder contains all the posts, attachments, shared files, user accounts, and some settings information.

• The Installation folder includes the Traction TeamPage software and supporting software, plugins, and configuration information, such as network settings, directory server, stylesheets, color and logo customizations. This folder defaults to C:\Program Files\Traction on Windows, /Applications/Traction on the Macintosh, and /opt/Traction or /usr/Traction on Linux and Solaris.

If you followed the default installation sequence, your Journal folder is inside your installation folder, and is usually named MyJournal. If you customized your installation, your journal may reside in a different folder.

Where is my Installation Folder?

If you're not certain where TeamPage is installed, you can tell from Server Setup; the installation folder is the folder that contains the (lowecase) traction folder.

Where is my Journal Folder?

If you're not sure where your Journal folder is, Server Setup will tell you. In most cases, the journal folder is inside the Installation folder.

Should I should down TeamPage while backing up?

Shutting down during backup is optional, and unusual.

Background

TeamPage stores its journal data in files that are normally closed except while they are being read and written, but its index files are generally kept open.

• Append operations to the Journal and write operations to configuration files are generally handled all at once by the operating system, which means that the journal file and separate configuration files are individually consistent. Since these operations are relatively infrequent, nearly instantaneous, and normally unrelated, these files are also collectively consistent, dormant, and closed almost all of the time.

• Index files, which take relatively long to update and are much more likely to be inconsistent, can be completely regenerated from the journal data on restore.

• Attachments and shared files are stored in an embedded content management system that provides a transactional framework designed to maximize consistently. Files in the process of being uploaded aren't recognized as having been added until the operation has fully completed.

Reasons and Times to Shut Down During Backup

• You need perfect consistency — When the system is shut down, assuming it shut down cleanly, all files should be in a consistent state, no files are mid-upload, no index updates are partially written, and no files are open.

• You're moving your TeamPage installation to a different folder, computer, or architecture—and you want to make sure you take it all with you.

• You are running on such an old Windows operating system that the Volume Shadow Copy Service is unavailable and you can't back up open files, and you can't update to the latest service pack. (We hope this isn't you!)

• Your system isn't needed 24x7.

Reasons Not to Shut Down During Backup

• Shutting down during backups makes the system unavailable for the duration of the backup or snapshot.

• Shutting down during backup is administratively more complicated and requires manual intervention or careful scripting.

• Journal Indexes can be rebuilt on restore.

• It's acceptable for work-in-progress not to be included in a given backup.

Recommendation

Most customers back up their systems while they are running, except when creating an archival backup or moving the system to another location, with the understanding that works-in-progress will not be included.

How do I shut down Traction for backups?

• On Windows, you can use the services control panel (services.msc) or the net stop and net start commands — see Support1642 for additional information.

• On Linux and Solaris, if you follow the complete installation procedure in Installing on Linux and Solaris you can use /etc/init.d/traction stop and /etc/init.d/traction start.

• On the Macintosh, if you follow the instructions in Configuring Spaces to Read Mail for automatic startup and shutdown, you can use sudo /sbin/SystemStarter stop Traction and sudo /sbin/SystemStarter start Traction.

How do I know when Traction is shut down?

The shutdown process waits for in-process actions to complete before completing the shutdown. Therefore, before commencing a backup, you should make sure that the two Traction java processes (jave.exe on Windows) are no longer running.

Platform Specific Backup Instructions and Recommendations

Windows

• Make sure that Volume Shadow Copy Services are enabled; this allows Windows to back up open files.

• Long filename support—we recommend that you use backup software capable of backing up full NTFS paths, not just 256-character Windows paths. Many customers use cygwin 1.3's GNU tar program to create archival backups of their TeamPage installations. Microsoft's RoboCopy also supports long filenames. If your backup software doesn't support long filenames, it may silently ignore them, leading to an incomplete backup of your WebDAV repository or attachments folder.

• Make sure your backup software is configured to back up open files.

• Many of our Windows customers use Veritas; some use Windows Backup.

Macintosh

• Time Machine is a very good way to keep your Macintosh TeamPage server backed up.

Solaris

• We recommend using ZFS snapshots to quickly capture an image of the system. If you wish to bring the system down for the backup, you can snapshot instantly, and bring it back online, then archive the snapshot. This lets you have 100% consistent backups with just a moment of downtime.

VMware

• Many of our customers run in VMware, and backup their system by snapshotting virtual disks and sometimes the entire virtual system.

Restoring

To restore from a backup, first put the files back where they belong. Generally this means that you should restore them to the same file path as where they came from.

Next, run the installer that you used to install TeamPage, or the latest installer (see Welcome1). This will configure the startup scripts and install any services.

If you are restoring on a platform other than Windows, be sure to configure the startup scripts according to the Installation and Configuration Guide for your platform.

If you backed up TeamPage while it was running, you will need to remove the lock file from the Journal folder and you should rebuild the indexes using the Rebuild program in the server directory.

You should then be able to run TeamPage normally.

Moving an existing installation to new hardware

Please see Customer267: How do I move a Traction TeamPage Installation to a different computer?.

Attachments:

Traction Server Setup | General.png
Traction Server Setup | General-1.png
ariel_1 (cjn).png

referenced by (2)

Doc360: Advanced Features and Concepts Doc191: Overview

references (4)

Doc351: Installation and Configuration Guide Doc143: Installing on Linux and Solaris Doc44: Configuring Spaces to Read Mail Customer267: How do I move a Traction TeamPage Installation to a different computer?

Article: Doc19 (permalink)
Date: March 22, 2008; 3:46:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Author Name: Documentation Importer
Author ID: importer