Backing up Apache Subversion
No matter how clued up you are on Apache Subversion, disasters do happen, so it’s important to make backups of your repository data. In Subversion, there are two main ways to make a backup of your repository:
1) Incremental backup – makes a copy of all the changes that occurred since the last backup. To create an incremental backup, run the following command:
svnadmin dump {repository} -r {starting_revision} -incremental.
This command creates a dump file with information about the revisions that took place between the “starting_revision” and the latest revision, which can then be loaded following any unexpected data loss.
2) Full backup – this essentially creates a copy of an entire repository. It can be created in two ways:
svnadmin hotcopy {repository}{destination}
This command will create a local directory containing a complete copy of the repository, including hooks, configuration files and database files.
Alternatively, you can use the ‘hot backup’ script located in the tools/backup directory:
hot-backup.py {repository}{destination}