Backing up and restoring FishEye data

Screenshot: The FishEye Backup screen

Using the command line to backup

Your FishEye instance must be running during the backup.

1. Open a terminal or command prompt on the FishEye server computer.
2. Navigate to the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory.
3. Run the backup command on the command line using any desired options (described in the table below). By default, all backup components, except repository cache data, is included in the backup.

The backup is created as a new Zip archive file and placed in the FISHEYE_INST/backup/ directory.
Note that if your FishEye instance uses a custom FISHEYE_INST directory, make sure the environment variable is properly set when running the backup command.

Advanced backup command line settings

In some cases it might be preferable to only backup a limited set of items. This could be useful when your instance uses an external database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL and your DBA has already configured automatic backups in the database. The commands below allow this.

Backup command line examples

These examples are for use in a Linux-like operating system. When using these commands on Windows, use the filename fisheyectl.bat and use the correct slashes. Run the command from the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory.

The basic syntax of the backup command is as follows:

$ ./fisheyectl.sh backup [OPTIONS]

To see inline help for all backup options, run the following command in the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory:

$ ./fisheyectl.sh backup --help

Backing up with compression of 9, quiet mode and setting an output location:

$ ./fisheyectl.sh backup --compression 9 -q -f /application_backups/fisheye/20090215.zip

Backup including cache data (also includes all default components):

$ ./fisheyectl.sh backup --cache

Known limitations

Please note that the below limitations are common for any Java-based backup tool.

Archives Containing Over 65535 Files
Versions of Java earlier than v1.6 (b25) are incapable of handling zip files that contain more than 65,535 files. The solution for this problem is to either upgrade to a version of Java later than v1.6 (b25), or ensure that the archive does not exceed the threshold (contains less than 65,535 files). The FishEye cache (not included in backups by default) can be a contributor of many small files. Hence, exclude the cache from backups if this is likely to be a concern.

Archives Larger Than 4GB
Java has trouble reading and writing zip files that are larger than 4GB. As of release 1.5 Java appears capable of reliably creating archives that are over 4GB, but remains unable to extract them. For details see Sun's bug report. Also be aware of the fact that some file systems (including FAT32) have trouble with files larger than 4GB.

As a workaround, make sure you do not create archives that are larger than 4GB. The FishEye cache (not included in backups by default) can be a contributor of a lot of small files (although these tend to compress very well). If you still want to archive everything and end up with an achive that is too large, consider creating separate backups for the FishEye cache and uploaded files respectively.

Scheduling FishEye backups

To set a schedule for automatic backups:

1. Go to the Admin area and click Backup (under 'System Settings').
2. Click Manage Scheduled Backups at the bottom of the page.
3. Click Edit, set the desired options, then click Save.

The options for scheduled backups are detailed in the table below:

Screenshot: Scheduling backups in FishEye

Be aware that scheduled backups can fill up disks unless you regularly move or delete old archives.

Restoring FishEye data

Using the command line to restore FishEye data

There is currently no way to restore a backup from the admin interface because FishEye must be shut down during a data restore.

Restoring a backup will irreversibly overwrite the data of your installation with the data from the backup archive. Note that you cannot restore data into versions of FishEye which are older than the version that created the backup.

1. Install FishEye into a new, empty directory (this must be the same version that the backup was created from, or later).
2. Make sure the FishEye instance is not running.
3. Open a command line interface on the FishEye server computer.
4. Run the restore command on the command line with any desired options.
5. The specified elements will be restored.
6. Start the FishEye instance.
7. When using FishEye integrated with Crucible, you will need to re-index your repositories after restoring data, unless the backup archive was created with the --cache option.

Restore command line options

By default, the restore process will restore all items found in the backup archive (so if you included the caches using the --cache option, these will automatically be restored). However, you can specify a partial restore, by explicitly specifying the item names on the command line.

If you are using an external database (as opposed to the default HSQL database), make sure the JDBC driver file is present in the FISHEYE_INST/lib directory when running restore.

Furthermore, if you are restoring to a new FishEye instance and home directory, and select --dbtype of mysql, you must download the JDBC driver and accept the license agreement before proceeding with the restore.

The options available for use with the restore command are listed in the following table:

These examples are for use in a Linux-like operating system. When using these commands on Windows, use the filename fisheyectl.bat and use the correct slashes. Run the command from the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory.

The basic syntax of the restore command is as follows:

$ ./fisheyectl.sh restore -f /path/to/backup_2009-10-02_1138.zip [OPTIONS]

To see inline help for all backup options, run the following command in the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory:

$ ./fisheyectl.sh restore --help

Restoring a backup with cache data (also restores all default components):

$ ./fisheyectl.sh restore --cache

Migrating backup data

When the process restores a SQL database, it looks at the configuration data (config.xml) included in the backup archive to learn which database product was used and how to connect to it. When FishEye uses the built-in HSQLDB database (which is the default), the restored instance will also use that.
However, when the restored instance will use a different database than the backed up instance (for instance, HSQLDB was used at the time the backup was created, but it needs to be restored on MySQL ), you should use the command line options to point the process to the new database.

Command line example: migrating backup data to MySQL

These examples are for use in a Linux-like operating system. When using these commands on Windows, use the filename fisheyectl.bat and use the correct slashes. Run the command from the <FishEye home directory>/bin/ directory.

Restoring to a FishEye instance that uses a different database (ensure the MySQL driver jar file is present in the FISHEYE_INST/lib directory)

$ ./fisheyectl.sh restore \
--username john \
--password smith \
--jdbcurl jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/crucible \
--dbtype mysql \
--file /path/to/backup_2009-10-02_1138.zip