topic Re: Backup Alfresco in Alfresco Archive

Backup Alfresco

hienque — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:06:09 GMT

Hi everyone,I want to backup all of Alfresco . I use Windows 2k8. And Alfresco will move to new server. How can I backup and restore?

Re: Backup Alfresco

bisana — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 07:47:53 GMT

(a) copy alf_data dir
(b) take a copy of your alfresco DB instance
© On the new server, restore the DB
(d) install the instance in new machine, do not start the service
(e) copy the contents of previous alf_data to the newly installed alfresco instance
start the service,

Re: Backup Alfresco

hienque — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 08:55:01 GMT

Thanks bisana!
Can you guide me detail steps to backup and restore DB (b&c). My DB is installed default(postgresql). I do not know much about database

Re: Backup Alfresco

bisana — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:06:31 GMT

If it is the default installation, it is very simple
Just copy the whole Alfresco installation and copy it to the server where u want it to

Re: Backup Alfresco

hienque — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:15:30 GMT

So I just need to copy the whole Alfresco installation and run startup.bat in tomcat folder.
Many thanks for your help!

Re: Backup Alfresco

hienque — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 01:37:44 GMT

it failed when I copy the whole Alfresco installation (c:\alfresco) and run startup.bat(tomcat) of another server.

Re: Backup Alfresco

bopolissimus — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:58:00 GMT

Hi hienque,

I don't use windows, so this is general advice only. Also, you don't provide enough detail in your first post. It's not clear if you're using the alfresco bundle installer or if you installed alfresco into an already running tomcat. It's also not clear if you're using the postgresql that comes with the bundled installer or if you're using a postgresql instance that's installed separately.

Below (and Joseph's post above) assumes that you're using everything from the bundle (java, libreoffice, tomcat, postgresql, the imagemagick and swftools stuff in common). If this isn't the case you should say so.

1. are you using the alfresco bundle installer and the database that comes with the bundle?

2. did you *stop* alfresco before you copied it over? Note that when you stop alfresco it should stop the bundled database (postgresql) as well as the bundled tomcat. After stopping alfresco, look in the task manager and ensure that both postgresql and tomcat stopped.

3. If you didn't first stop alfresco before copying over, first stop alfresco.

4. Once alfresco is stopped, the simplest way to move alfresco to the other server would be to copy the whole alfresco directory over. You could zip it up and unzip at the other server. Or you could just share the remote drive and copy the whole alfresco directory over to the shared drive.

5. When copying everything over, make sure that everything is installed to THE SAME directory. e.g., if the original directory was C:\Alfresco-4.2.c then the destination should be the same.

6. I don't know what username alfresco runs as on windows, but you should make sure the user it runs as on the original should also be on the destination.

7. On linux, the bundled postgresql runs as the postgres user. See on your original alfresco what user the postgresql server runs as and create that user on the destination server.

8. Once you copy everything over (first making sure that on the original alfresco is stopped as is postgresql), you should be able to start alfresco on the destination server.

9. If it still doesn't start, you'll want to look at your catalina.out or alfresco.log files and look for ERROR or EXCEPTION. Those will point you at the reason for alfresco not starting. If you're not clear on the error, paste your alfresco.log or catalina.out here Possibly XXXX out (better) or remove (not so good) anything confidential that you don't want to expose to the world (ip addresses, usernames, hostnames, domain names, etc).

Re: Backup Alfresco

nikes — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 05:01:42 GMT

You need to provide more information and also log file for error messages.

Did you set your new alf_data location in alfresco-global.properties file?

Re: Backup Alfresco

hienque — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:02:46 GMT

@bopolissimus
Thank your enthusiastic answer!
1. I am using the alfresco bundle installer and the database on Server X(windows 2k8 64bit - C:\alfresco)
2-3. I stopped Alfresco (tomcat Server and Postgre) before zip full alfresco folder.
4-5. I copy zip file to another Server ( also Wink28 64bit - C:\alfresco) and extract.
After that, I run startup.bat (tomcat folder on Server Y) . But it is not finished. it stops as shown
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/4645/errorvzy.png

@Nikes: Thanks. My detail anwser is above.

Re: Backup Alfresco

bopolissimus — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:32:14 GMT

That screenshot indicates there are memory problems. Is there a difference in RAM between the source and destination servers? Or does the destination server have more programs running so it has less free memory even if the amount of RAM there is the same as at the source?

Also, if it's permgen, you'll want to find the tomcat startup file (on linux it's tomcat/scripts/ctl.sh, maybe look for tomcat/scripts/ctl.bat on your computer or similar, or find how startup.bat eventually starts tomcat. In that batch file you'll probably see a JAVA_OPTS variable. In that variable set the following:

XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Xmx1024

you may want to increase or decrease those numbers as appropriate for you. They work for me although my max permgen size of 512MB is probably too high :-). Works for me though, memory is cheap, headaches are expensive.

If that doesn't help (or if your values are already high) then you'll probably need to post your whole tomcat7 command line (not sure how you'd get that from windows, maybe something in the task manager?) and probably also all of alfresco.log and catalina.log. Before posting the log files (just copy-paste them here), first stop alfresco, remove the current log files (so you'll have new log files that don't have extra content) and then start alfresco. when it fails, stop it again and copy-paste the log file content. Log file content could be pasted here or (maybe better) pasted on pastebin.com and you just paste the URL to the pastebin here.

Re: Backup Alfresco

hienque — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:13:03 GMT

Hi bopolissimus,
Here are alfresco.log, catalina.bat, startup.bat and catalina.bat . It has just created.
http://www.mediafire.com/?42qnqw3u8gc4lmm

Re: Backup Alfresco

bopolissimus — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:57:02 GMT

There are 2 problems there.

in alfresco.log, the errors indicate that it's not able to connect to the database. look in your alfresco-global.properties file for the db.* parameters. from the second server, are you able to connect to the database? not sure how you'd test (since I don't use windows). Probably pgadmin. install pgadmin on that computer, and configure pgadmin to connect to your db.host at your db.port using your db.username and connecting to the db.name. You'll have to figure out what the problem is there. Maybe paste your db.* parameters here, but that might not help too much since whether that's correct or not will depend on your environment, which we can't see.

you still have that PermGen issue. startup.bat calls catalina.bat. Look at catalina.bat to see if it starts tomcat. If not, look in there to see what .bat file it calls that starts tomcat. When you're finally at the .bat file that starts tomcat, edit the java command line (or JAVA_OPTS, if it exists and is used in the java command line) to include the XX:MaxPermSize mentioned above.

Good luck.

Re: Backup Alfresco

mnbrecher — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:26:02 GMT

Hi this does not appear to work.

I copied the entire install folder accross to a unit with a fresh Ubuntu installation.
Then I moved it to a folder with the exact same path

When I run sudo sh Install_Directory/alfresco.sh start
everything except postgres starts, all I get is Unknown ID: postgres

Do I have to install postgres?
This makes no sense, surely it was copied across, in the Alfresco Installation folder?