Preparing on another server?

MySQL & MariaDB Percona XtraBackup
1

Hi, We have a 300GB mysql 5.1 server with a single DB and all InnoDB tables… at midnight we are running innobackupex running a full backup each night to our NFS-based NAS. My question is, can we prepare the backup on another server? e.g. backup on the primary mysql server, then run the prepare on another server?

I have tried this, but get this:

xtrabackup version 2.1.4 for Percona Server 5.1.70 unknown-linux-gnu (x86_64) (revision id: 657)
xtrabackup: uses posix_fadvise().
xtrabackup: Can’t change dir to ‘/var/lib/mysql’ (Errcode: 2)
xtrabackup: cannot my_setwd /var/lib/mysql
innobackupex: Error: ibbackup child process has died at /usr/bin/innobackupex line 416.

2

Yes, you can prepare on another server, just make sure XtraBackup version is the same as on backuped server.
Please show what exactly commands did you use, full innobackupex log and in what directory is your backup stored.