Question

I'm looking to make a backup of my subversion repositories, such that if the server crashes I can easily restore them else where. My thought is to use the svnadmin dump command to dump the SVN to backup device.

Would you use this? And if so, would you use --incremental and/or --deltas in the command?

Answer 1

svnadmin dump is the right way to go.

Usage of --incremental and --deltas is depending on the size of your repositories and the power of the server: If you have the space, go for full backups each time, it´s the easiest to keep and play back. If this runs too slow, go for --incremental. And if this backup is too big, go for --deltas.

Important: Whatever you do for backup, you must play it back to a test server to see if and how it works.

Answer 2

You could do a git svn clone of the repo, which will provide an easy way to create a full backup with history that you can very easily update with git svn rebase As an added bonus, the backup repo will be smaller than original.

Answer 3

The easiest method of making a backup is to use svnsync. This replays your commits to a backup repository, so if the master one crashes or is otherwise inaccessible, you can switch to the backup. You can also force the sync to occur in a post-commit hook so it is always up to date.

The only caveat is that you must copy the hooks and similar configuration (eg users, passwords) to the backup repository when you initially create it, and when you make changes. Svnsync only incrementally copies revisions after initial creation.