# innobackupex --datadir what about this ?

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-datadir-what-about-this/3252>\
**Category:** Percona XtraBackup\
**Created:** [February 5, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-datadir-what-about-this/3252 "2014-02-05T02:25:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![brumia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/439d5e/32.png) [@brumia](https://forums.percona.com/u/brumia)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-datadir-what-about-this/3252/1 "2014-02-05T02:25:35Z")

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Hi,

what about --datadir ?  
It can be set in xtrabackup command-line options but how to pass this options from innobackupex script ?  
Please Help !!!

Brumia

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**Author:** ![niljoshi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/niljoshi/32/16889_2.png) [@niljoshi](https://forums.percona.com/u/niljoshi)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 2:33am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-datadir-what-about-this/3252/2 "2014-02-06T02:33:06Z")

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Hi,

Generally, you don’t need to specify --datadir with innobackupex script because it will find datadir by itself. But still you want to give than you can use --defaults-file=/path/to/my.cnf where datadir will be mentioned OR you can create a separate options file. Check here.  
[url][Percona XtraBackup](http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.1/innobackupex/creating_a_backup_ibk.html%5B/url%5D)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![brumia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/439d5e/32.png) [@brumia](https://forums.percona.com/u/brumia)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2014, 3:40am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/innobackupex-datadir-what-about-this/3252/3 "2014-03-04T03:40:58Z")

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but why innobackupex or xtrabackup didnt get datadir from instance variable (show variables like ‘%datadir%’) ?