[Koha] Stopping koha-common (and others) for backup and other system tasks

[John Sterbenz]

Good day, all!

Now that I've finally gotten our campus backup solution working with my
koha server, I'm getting ready to advance my installation beyond the
relatively basic, out-of-the-box stage in which I've kept it since going
with a "soft live" launch in January.

This got me thinking.  In the land of my former system (it had a lot of I's
in it), the record processing component of the software was stopped during
times of backup or during times when changes could be made to
methods/modules/etc. that would send results to the processing program,
like a system upgrade.  This starting and stopping was never done directly
by a user, of course--rather, it was scripted into the options of the user
interface.

Thus, the questions:  Should koha-common be stopped before backups are
performed?  Before any type of software upgrade?  Are there other programs
that need to be stopped as well, like the indexer (we're still using the
"old method")?  If anything should be stopped, is there an order in which
they should be stopped (and, I imagine, restarted--in reverse order)?

Backups by default (utilizing Tivoli, for those morbidly curious) are run
with static serialization (a file must not change during its backup, or the
backup of that file will fail).  Dynamic serialization backups (in which
files CAN change as they're being written to the backup device) are
available, but I'm not particularly confident in the configuration of those
on the backup server side given a few incidents with the old server, which
was set up for this type of backup.  Because we're no longer running
circulation and very little will be done on the server outside of monthly
Serials Solutions record loads and payment tracking, I expect no problems
here, but it's worth mentioning.

A followup--Will static serialization suffice for backup, or should dynamic
serialization be invoked, especially if none of the processes associated
with koha are stopped prior to backup running?

I'm appreciative of any feedback anyone can provide for these questions.
Thank you for your time and consideration!

John


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John E. Sterbenz, Jr.
Associate Librarian
Manager, Technical Services, Collections, and Library Automation
701 Tappan Street, Rm. K3359
Kresge Business Administration Library
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 48109-1234

TEL: (734) 764-5746
FAX: (734) 764-4162