# Incremental Backups Failing **URL:** \ **Category:** Percona XtraBackup\ **Created:** [March 15, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/incremental-backups-failing/2343 "2013-03-15T03:21:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidchilders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@davidchilders](https://forums.percona.com/u/davidchilders)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/incremental-backups-failing/2343/1 "2013-03-15T03:21:55Z")
Hello, everyone - I have a situation where xtrabackup fails to create an incremental backup from time to time, however it seems to be random and intermittent. I have been unable to figure out what happens to cause the backups to fail. A tail of the log file entry for the error looks like this: IMPORTANT: Please check that the backup run completes successfully. At the end of a successful backup run innobackupex prints “completed OK!”. innobackupex: Using mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.25, for Linux (x86\_64) using re adline 5.1 innobackupex: Using mysql server version Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. innobackupex: Created backup directory /data/backups/incremental/04 130315 04:00:09 innobackupex: Starting mysql with options: --password=xxxxxxxx –user=‘bkpuser’ --unbuffered – 130315 04:00:09 innobackupex: Connected to database with mysql child process (p id=24901) 130315 04:00:11 innobackupex: Connection to database server closed 130315 04:00:11 innobackupex: Starting ibbackup with command: xtrabackup\_55 --defaults-group=“mysqld” --backup --suspend-at-end --target-dir=/data/backups/incremental/04 --incremental-basedir=‘/data/backups/incremental/03’ --parallel=4 innobackupex: Waiting for ibbackup (pid=24908) to suspend innobackupex: Suspend file ‘/data/backups/incremental/04/xtrabackup\_suspended’ xtrabackup: Error: cannot open /data/backups/incremental/03/xtrabackup\_checkpoints xtrabackup: error: failed to read metadata from /data/backups/incremental/03/xtrabackup\_checkpoints innobackupex: Error: ibbackup child process has died at /usr/bin/innobackupex line 374. - ‘[’ 2 -eq 0 ‘]’ - echo ‘\nIncremental Backup failed at 04\n’ \nIncremental Backup failed at 04\n - echo -e 'Incremental Backup failed at 04: ’ - mail -s ‘Please check the status log.’ \ – -r bkpuser@localhost - ‘[’ 0 -eq 1 ‘]’ - exit 1 So, to me, it looks like the most important part of all that is: xtrabackup: Error: cannot open /data/backups/incremental/03/xtrabackup\_checkpoints xtrabackup: error: failed to read metadata from /data/backups/incremental/03/xtrabackup\_checkpoints I have worked with the system administrator for this system and he was unable to find any indication of a problem in the storage subsystem indicating that it had gone off line or gone into a read only state or anything like that. Has anyone had any similar experiences? This seems to happen on all of the servers I manage where xtrabackup is installed, from time to time. Most of the time, xtrabackup runs just fine. Unfortunately, this is ‘not good enough’. ☹ Any and all hints, guidance, suggestions, etc. are greatly appreciated! /David C. P.S. Incremental hourly backups continue to fail until the next full backup happens at 2:00AM - then the incrementals are able to find the metadata again and they pick back up. P.P.S. I have uploaded the script that is executed to manage the backups. I am not the author, nor am I very talented with scripting. But if anyone who is talented would like to have a look, there you go. I did remove an email address and replaced it with but that’s the only change from what’s running. System Information: xtrabackup --version xtrabackup version 2.0.1 for Percona Server 5.1.59 unknown-linux-gnu (x86\_64) (revision id: 446) uname -a Linux 2.6.32-220.17.1.el6.x86\_64 #1 SMP Wed May 16 00:01:37 BST 2012 x86\_64 x86\_64 x86\_64 GNU/Linux CentOS release 6.2 (Final) df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv\_root 34G 2.7G 29G 9% / tmpfs 5.9G 0 5.9G 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 485M 68M 392M 15% /boot /dev/sdb1 394G 238G 137G 64% /data free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 11912 9850 2062 0 2 26 -/+ buffers/cache: 9820 2092 Swap: 6015 784 5231 ---
**Author:** ![davidchilders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@davidchilders](https://forums.percona.com/u/davidchilders)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2013, 6:56am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/incremental-backups-failing/2343/2 "2013-03-26T06:56:48Z")
Does anyone have any ideas at all? Even if someone has a 'feeling' that it could be a problem somewhere would be great. The problem is still happening and we still don't have any more information. Thank you very much for your consideration. /David C.