Using Encryption and Compression Tools With Mariabackup

Mariabackup supports streaming to stdout with the --stream=xbstream option. This option allows easy integration with popular encryption and compression tools. Below are several examples.

Encrypting and Decrypting Backup With openssl

The following example creates an AES-encrypted backup, protected with the password "mypass" and stores it in a file "backup.xb.enc":

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream  | openssl  enc -aes-256-cbc -k mypass > backup.xb.enc

To decrypt and unpack this backup into the current directory, the following command can be used:

openssl  enc -d -aes-256-cbc -k mypass -in backup.xb.enc | mbstream -x

Compressing and Decompressing Backup With gzip

This example compresses the backup without encrypting:

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream | gzip > backupstream.gz

We can decompress and unpack the backup as follows:

gunzip -c backupstream.gz | mbstream -x

Compressing and Encrypting Backup, Using gzip and openssl

This example adds a compression step before the encryption, otherwise looks almost identical to the previous example:

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream | gzip | openssl  enc -aes-256-cbc -k mypass > backup.xb.gz.enc

We can decrypt, decompress and unpack the backup as follow (note gzip -d in the pipeline):

openssl  enc -d -aes-256-cbc -k mypass -in backup.xb.gz.enc |gzip -d| mbstream -x

Compressing and Encrypting with 7Zip

7zip archiver is a popular utility (especially on Windows) that supports reading from standard output, with the --si option, and writing to stdout with the -so option, and can thus be used together with Mariabackup.

Compressing backup with the 7z command line utility works as follows:

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream | 7z a -si backup.xb.7z

Uncompress and unpack the archive with

7z e backup.xb.7z -so |mbstream -x

7z also has builtin AES-256 encryption. To encrypt the backup from the previous example using password SECRET, add -pSECRET to the 7z command line.

Compressing with zstd

Compress

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream  | zstd - -o backup.xb.zst -f -1

Decompress , unpack

zstd -d backup.xbstream.zst -c | mbstream -x

Encrypting With GPG

Encryption

mariabackup --user=root --backup --stream=xbstream | gpg -c --passphrase SECRET --batch --yes -o backup.xb.gpg

Decrypt, unpack

gpg --decrypt --passphrase SECRET --batch --yes  backup.xb.gpg | mbstream -x

Interactive Input for Passphrases

Most of the described tools also provide a way to enter a passphrase interactively (although 7zip does not seem to work well when reading input from stdin). Please consult documentation of the tools for more info.

Writing extra status files

By default files like xtrabackup_checkpoints are also written to the output stream only, and so would not be available for taking further incremental backups without prior extraction from the compressed or encrypted stream output file.

To avoid this these files can additionally be written to a directory that can then be used as input for further incremental backups using the --extra-lsndir=... option.

See also e.g: Combining incremental backups with streaming output