Re: Is it safe to use slapcat for live ldap server backups?

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Marc Rovner wrote:
> Greetings folks,
>
> The subject says it all.  Is it safe to use `slapcat` for live ldap
> server backups?
>
> The slapcat page doesn't say anything regarding this, and the OpenLDAP
> FAQ-O-Matic page at http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/287.html says
> rather non-definitely:
>
>      For BDB and HDB, slapcat(8) can generally be used while the
>      server is running
>
> The few entries on this list an the Internet I've found, mostly of folks
> having problems with backups and slapcat, folks are always asked "Did
> you stop theserver before running slapcat?", which any answer I find has
> the people saying "Yes".
>
> Does that mean there's a non-zero chance of a mangled backups?  What
> situations can't you use slapcat in?

There are no known situations where slapcat will not work on back-bdb 
and back-hdb. For back-ldbm slapd must not be running, but back-ldbm is 
obsolete and isn't worth discussing any more.

--
  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/