Maintenance

Once an IRIS system is set up, there are a few maintenance tasks which should be done to ensure reliable operation.

Database Backup & Restore

It is a good idea to backup the IRIS database on a regular basis. This can be done with a command such as the following:

pg_dump tms | gzip > tms-20190827.sql.gz

This command can be placed in a python or bash script which is run by cron once per day. For off-site backups, the file could be copied to another host, using scp or a similar utility.

To restore the tms database from one of these backup files, you will first need to shut down the IRIS server (and anything else connected to the tms database). Then, run the following commands (as tms user):

dropdb tms
createdb tms
zcat tms-20190827.sql.gz | pgsql tms

IRIS Upgrades

It is a good idea to backup the database before attempting an upgrade.

IRIS uses a typical major.minor.micro versioning scheme. Each part of the version is a natural number, starting from zero. Whenever one of the numbers is incremented, any later parts are reset to 0. Micro version updates are for bug fixes and trivial enhancements. Minor and major version changes are for new features which require database changes. Always check the release notes for instructions on each upgrade.

With a new rpm file available, a micro upgrade can be accomplished with the following commands (as root):

dnf update iris-{major}.{minor}.{micro}-{build}.noarch.rpm
iris_ctl update
systemctl restart iris

A minor or major upgrade requires an additional step — migrating the database schema. The following commands can be used in this case (as root):

dnf update iris-{major}.{minor}.{micro}-{build}.noarch.rpm
psql tms -f /var/lib/iris/sql/migrate-{major}.{minor}.sql
iris_ctl update
systemctl restart iris

Note: when skipping one or more minor versions in an upgrade, all intervening migrate scripts must be run. So, when upgrading from 4.55.0 to 4.57.0, the database upgrade would consist of these commands:

psql tms -f /var/lib/iris/sql/migrate-4.56.sql
psql tms -f /var/lib/iris/sql/migrate-4.57.sql

Warning: there is no supported method of downgrading an IRIS system. If a downgrade is required, the database should be restored from a backup and the IRIS rpm should be reinstalled.