Decompressing backups taken with newer version backup in xbstream format

MySQL & MariaDB Percona XtraBackup
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1

Hi, I don’t believe this was raise before, or I’ve missed this.

Is there any problem using an older version of xbstream to decompress backups created by a newer version of xtrabackup (in xbstream format)

For example: given my tests, I can use xtrabackup 8.404 to take a backup in xbstream format, and able to extract using xbstream 2.4. It works but have anyone come across issues doing this? Thanks. :smiley:

Command I used to create a backup, used xtraBackup 8.4.0-4 (I suppose it also used xbstream 84 implicitly):

xtrabackup --backup --user=root --password=123456 --stream=xbstream \
   --compress=lz4 --compress-threads=4 \
   --target-dir=/home/backup/8.4-config-34 \
   | split -d --bytes=50MB - /home/backup/8.4-config-34/backup.xbstream

I have three major versions of xtrabackup installed:

ls /usr/bin/xbstream*
/usr/bin/xbstream  /usr/bin/xbstream-80  /usr/bin/xbstream-84

Command I used to decompress (xbstream 24):

/usr/bin/xbstream-24 -x - -C /home/extracted-backup

It worked fine, but should i keep doing this, or ask suggested in another thread, use the same major version of xtrabackup to create and restore backup. :folded_hands:

2

@hualong_qiao

Yes, the same xbstream binary [8.4] comes with PXB [8.4]. We recommend to use the similar PXB version or binaries while performing backup and restoration operations however if the older xbstream binaries works fine while decompressing your backups then it would be okay. But please make sure to test the prepare/restore events as well when using any such older binaries just to confirm nothing breaking.

xtrabackup --version
2025-12-21T07:17:31.771755-00:00 0 [Note] [MY-011825] [Xtrabackup] recognized server arguments: --server-id=1 --datadir=/var/lib/mysql
xtrabackup version 8.4.0-4 based on MySQL server 8.4.0 Linux (x86_64) (revision id: c584cb20)

/usr/bin/xbstream --version
/usr/bin/xbstream  Ver 8.4.0-4 for Linux (x86_64) (revision id: c584cb20)

I don’t found any specific issues however it looks the latest version having more option like [ decompress-threads etc]

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