[Opensim-users] How to set up autobackup

Tue Feb 24 00:46:19 UTC 2015

I have successfully recreated my entire 8 by 8 set of regions from OSGrid in a standalone first making the OAR’s from another identical standalone running in another server using the autobackup functions.

I have been looking around on the second standalone inworld for about an hour and do not see any differences what ever.

I do have one comment about autobackup.  It was significantly faster at making the OAR’s than my old way of a cron job firing off a bash script that feed commands to the opensim console to generate the OAR’s.  The only short come I can see is the inability to give it a specific time to do the backup rather than an interval.  Using an interval makes the function totally dependent on when the instance was last started.  If a specific time could be used then only if the instance was not running at that time would an OAR not be made.

Another future addition might be the ability to pass parameters to the save oar function such as –publish.

Typically I do an OAR at 4 am every day and use a trim job to maintain the last 30 days of backups.  Now opensim is doing it all for me and I do not have to worry about all the interesting stuff that happens every 6 months or so when a new release of Fedora comes out and changes some of the basics like programmers love to do.

I wish I had discovered this feature of opensim years ago.  This is so much cleaner for us non “geek” folks.  Having 64 regions is a chore, trying to make sure you have backups for them where even the slightest change of name or instance loading means changing dozens of bash scripts is totally eliminated by placing the regions backup parameters in the region.ini.  

Great job even if it is 4 years late in being said.

Tom

From: David P. Giffen 
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 6:19 PM
To: opensim-users at opensimulator.org 
Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] How to set up autobackup

I would also do a manual OAR backup then load the oars created by the autobackup to test make sure it creating a good OAR. Who knows the last time that module was tested. 

From: opensim-users-bounces at opensimulator.org [mailto:opensim-users-bounces at opensimulator.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ringate
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 09:14
To: opensim-users at opensimulator.org
Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] How to set up autobackup

Success at last.  Thanks for the help and guidance to find the correct solution.

I noticed a few new parameters have crept into the auto backup function and there is no location where all of these things are brought together for a user to find.

I agree with Unadecal Arado  the feature to select a specific time would be a good addition.  I restart my regions daily at 4 am, and sometimes more often than that.

“It would be great if we had a key called AutoBackupTime = hh:mm, which schedules a backup for hh:mm no matter what is set, and then at AutoBackupInterval after that. This way, OAR generation might be more predictable at longer intervals.”

If I know how to update the wiki or better yet the opensim page found by Googling “opensim autobackup” with this information, I believe this function of opensim would be a much simpler function to implement.

I have added this to my .ini file so in the future I can easily make changes without going through dozens of trial and error operations.

;    Configuration Settings 

; Global (in OpenSim.ini under [AutoBackupModule] section)  AutoBackupModuleEnabled: True/False. Default: False. If False, every function in the module is as no-op as possible: just return as soon as realizing that we're not enabled. Otherwise it will try to get as far as it can with auto backup for each region. 

; Global (in OpenSim.ini) or Per-Region (in Regions/Regions.ini under the region's name's section) 

; IMPORTANT: Settings declared per-region in Regions/Regions.ini override settings in OpenSim.ini. Settings in OpenSim.ini, in turn, override hard-coded defaults.  AutoBackup: True/False. Default: False. If True, activate auto backup functionality. This is the only required option for enabling auto-backup; the other options have sane defaults. If False, the auto-backup module becomes a no-op for the region, and all other AutoBackup* settings are ignored. 

; AutoBackupModuleEnabled: True/False. Default: False. If False, every function in the module is as no-op as possible: just return as soon as realizing that we're not enabled. Otherwise it will try to get as far as it can with auto backup for each region. 

; AutoBackupInterval: Integer, non-negative value. Default: 720 (12 hours). The number of minutes between each backup attempt. If a negative or zero value is given, it is equivalent to setting AutoBackup = False. 

; AutoBackupBusyCheck: True/False. Default: True. If True, we will only take an auto-backup if a set of conditions are met. These conditions are heuristics to try and avoid taking a backup when the sim is busy. 

; AutoBackupScript: String. Default: not specified (disabled). File path to an executable script or binary to run when an automatic backup is taken. argv[1] of the executed file/script will be the file name of the generated OAR. If the process can't be spawned for some reason (file not found, no execute permission, etc), write a warning to the console. 

; AutoBackupNaming: string. Default: Time.  One of three strings (case insensitive): 

;  "Time": Current timestamp is appended to file name. An existing file will never be overwritten. 

;  "Sequential": A number is appended to the file name. So if RegionName_x.oar exists, we'll save to RegionName_{x+1}.oar next. An existing file will never be overwritten. 

;  "Overwrite": Always save to file named "RegionName.oar", even if we have to overwrite an existing file. 

; AutoBackupDir: String. Default: "." (the current directory). A directory (absolute or relative) where backups should be saved. If the path is not a directory, or insufficient permissions are available, a warning will be printed to the console and no backups will be taken. 

; AutoBackupDilationThreshold: float. Default: 0.5. Lower bound on time dilation required for BusyCheck heuristics to pass.  If the time dilation is below this value, don't take a backup right now. 

; AutoBackupAgentThreshold: int. Default: 10. Upper bound on # of agents in region required for BusyCheck heuristics to pass.  If the number of agents is greater than this value, don't take a backup right now. 

; AutoBackupKeepFilesForDays: int. Default: 0. 

;   1) number of days to keep backups (0 the default value will disable this option).

;   2) After each backup, remove all oars in the backup directory that are older than the specified number of days.

;    note: if the user set the bin directory as the backup location, only oar files are removed. There is no way to know if an oar was created by auto-backup, or manually created or uploaded. It is not recommended to use the bin directory for your auto backups for this reason.

; Example:

;[AutoBackupModule]

;    AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true

;    AutoBackup = true

;    AutoBackupInterval = 30

;    AutoBackupBusyCheck = false

;    AutoBackupThreshold = 1

;    AutoBackupSkipAssets = false

;    AutoBackupKeepFilesForDays = 30

;    AutoBackupNaming = Time

;    AutoBackupDir = /var/opensim/backup/test/

Tom

From: Dahlia Trimble 

Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 6:11 AM

To: opensim-users at opensimulator.org 

Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] How to set up autobackup

I had a typo in the last message; I had changed the time to 12 hours after the test but before copy/pasting. The time is specified in minutes and for 1 hour it would be:

AutoBackupInterval = 60

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 2:56 AM, Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com> wrote:

The AutoBackupModule is in OpenSim.Region.OptionalModules.dll. I'm not sure of the origins of the code, if it works properly, or if it is fully implemented or maintained.

I added the following to the bottom of *OpenSim.ini* and it appears to work:

[AutoBackupModule]
AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true
AutoBackup = true
AutoBackupInterval = 720
AutoBackupSkipAssets = true
AutoBackupKeepFilesForDays = 5
AutoBackupDir = ../backups/

After an hour I found a oar file in the specified directory. There were also console messages showing output from the save oar task.

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 1:28 AM, Unadecal Arado <unadecal.arado at gmail.com> wrote:

Hello again Thomas, I managed to work this out. I rummaged through some txt files I have been collecting with various configuration hacks collected through chatting to other sim owners in OSGrid  and I found this: 

[AutoBackupModule]

;; default is module is disabled at the top level

AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true

AutoBackup = true

AutoBackupInterval = 1440

AutoBackupBusyCheck = true

AutoBackupNaming = time

AutoBackupDir = "D:\OARBackups\"

AutoBackupThreshold = 1

I'm not sure what AutoBackupThreshold does, it might be an error in invoking AutoBackupdilationThreshold since it seems to be undocumented.

At any rate, the key ingredient there seems to be AutoBackup = true to enable the feature. It started working after I added this.

As a matter of interest, I run the base OS distro and the Metropolis distro, both at the 0.8.0.3 version level on Windows and there isn't a separate Autobackup module, but the feature works. Also, the Windows build seems to be happy with both UNIX and DOS style file paths.

As an aside, I don't think that having autoBackup as an interval from uptime is the best way to go about this. It works if the sim is undergoing constant change and you set the intervals short enough, such as 30, 60 or 120 minutes. In any given day, then, you are bound to have several OARs, which is great.

On the other hand, if the sim is fairly static or you are keen to minimize overheads and set the intervals to 12 or 24 hours because you don't need more than 1 or two OARs per day, using Autobackup might not work, particularly if the simulator restarts for whatever reason (most of my simulators are set to restart daily). In that case, Autobackup might chase a time interval which will never come.

It would be great if we had a key called AutoBackupTime = hh:mm, which schedules a backup for hh:mm no matter what if set, and then at AutoBackupInterval after that. Yhis way, OAR generation might be more predictable at longer intervals.

Unadecal

On 23 February 2015 at 06:22, Unadecal Arado <unadecal.arado at gmail.com> wrote:

[Update] 

I got curious, so I read the relevant Wiki pge (http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Feature_Proposals/AutoBackup), selected a currently unused simulator running Metropolis 0803, which is the current version, inserted  this section in the Opensim.ini file:

[AutoBackupModule]

    AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true

    AutoBackupInterval = 10

    AutoBackupDir = /Googledrive/Opensim-005/Embassy/OAR/

    AutoBackupNaming = Time

AutoBackupBusyCheck=False

I then restarted the simulator and verified that the AutoBackup configuration had taken effect by way of the "config show" console command. It all seemed set, but there are no backups taking place. I have no clues to follow at this point since the log does not provide any details at all.

On 22 February 2015 at 22:22, Unadecal Arado <unadecal.arado at gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not sure if your configuration is not being read correctly, which is strange because you reference AutoBackup config parameters in your StandaloneCommon.ini (I assume you include this file in your Opensim.ini) and also in your regions file. 

Have you tried adding these parameters directly into your Opensim.ini?

You might also want to set AutoBackupBusyCheck=False, since it could also be that the module is procrastinating for some unknown reason.

Hope this helps,

Unadecal

On 22 February 2015 at 21:36, Thomas Ringate <tringate at gmail.com> wrote:

  I can’t figure out what it is I am doing wrong.  I want to set up autobackup but it is not working for me.

  I placed the following into my StandaloneCommon.ini file.

  [AutoBackupModule]

      AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true

      AutoBackupInterval = 30

      AutoBackupDir = /var/opensim/backup/OAR/test/

      AutoBackupNaming = Time

  My expectations were this would set this for all of my regions as their default and if I wanted something different in a specific region I could set new values in that region.

  I let the simulator run for a few hours and no OAR’s were created at all.

  I then added the following to one of my regions.

  AutoBackupModuleEnabled = true

  AutoBackupInterval = 15

  AutoBackupDir = /var/opensim/backup/test/

  AutoBackupNaming = Time

  Left my simulator run for a few more hours and still nothing was saved.

  Looking in my log file I only see the following.

  2015-02-22 14:57:20,124 INFO  - OpenSim.Region.OptionalModules.World.AutoBackup.AutoBackupModule [AUTO BACKUP]: AutoBackupModule enabled

  2015-02-22 14:57:20,128 DEBUG - OpenSim.Region.OptionalModules.World.AutoBackup.AutoBackupModule [AUTO BACKUP]: Here is the default config:

  2015-02-22 14:57:20,130 DEBUG - OpenSim.Region.OptionalModules.World.AutoBackup.AutoBackupModule [AUTO BACKUP]: AutoBackup: DISABLED

  [AUTO BACKUP]: Interval: 720 minutes

  [AUTO BACKUP]: Do Busy Check: Yes

  [AUTO BACKUP]: Naming Type: Time

  [AUTO BACKUP]: Backup Dir: .

  [AUTO BACKUP]: Script: 

  Searching my bin directory I do not see any file named IRegionAutoBackupModule or anything even close.

  I used the last zip file on OSGrid to build my simulator.  I am running on Linux Fedora 21.

  The simulator has been dormant for the entire testing.  Only logged in once to make sure it was working.

  I never say anything appear in the console window either.

  Tom

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