This is a guide for PostgreSQL databases only.

Some information you will need

You first need to gatehr some information about the database server. You will need the hostname, port, database name and password. You can find all that information in the Continua.Server.Service.exe.config file. The default location is: C:\Program Files\VSoft Technologies\ContinuaCI\Server

After opening the file, look for this section:

 

<!-- Current -->
<property name="connection.driver_class">NHibernate.Driver.NpgsqlDriver</property>
<property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.PostgreSQL82Dialect</property>
<property name="connection.connection_string">Server=127.0.0.1;Port=9001;Database=ContinuaCI;User Id=postgres;Password=dsf99EDF983245LJfsdf;MinPoolSize=10;MaxPoolSize=256</property>

The last line contains all the information you need to connect to backup/restore the database.

 

Backing up

The program used to dump the database is called pg_dump.exe, a copy of it comes with the ContinuaCI Server installer and can be found in the %InstallDirectory%\Server\PostgreSQL\bin, the default location is C:\Program Files\VSoft Technologies\ContinuaCI\Server\PostgreSQL\bin.

pg_dump.exe has many options, the ones we recommend are the following:

 

Option 
-h

'127.0.0.1' if you're on the same machine as the Continua database server

-p9001 is the default port we use when installing Continua.
-Upostgres is the default username when installing Continua
-F pThis outputs the database in plain text which equates to SQL commands
-f <backup_filename>The full path and file name where the database backup will be written to.

The final options is the database name which is ContinuaCI.

The final command then will look something like this:

pg_dump.exe -h localhost -p 9001 -U postgres -F p -f C:\continua_backup.bak ContinuaCI

The pg_dump command will require a password after connecting to the postgres server. There are 3 ways to enter the password:

  1. After executing the command, you will be prompted for the password which you will be able to type in at the command line.
  2. pg_dump will look for the environment variable PGPASSWORD. If you store the database password here, pg_dump will use it. This method isn't recommended as it's the least secure.
  3. Store the password in pgpass.conf. The location of this file is %APPDATA%\postgresql\pgpass.conf (where %APPDATA% refers to the Application Data subdirectory in the user's profile)
    This method is considered most secure as you can set permissions on the file.

 

Restoring

Make sure you've read Backing up the ContinuaCI database and Backing up the ContinuaCI database before proceeding.

When pg_dump was executed, the -F p option was given. This means the backup file contains a list of sql commands with the data requires to re-create your database. To restore this type of backup file you need to use the psql.exe command. The default location of this file is: C:\Program Files\VSoft Technologies\ContinuaCI\Server\PostgreSQL\bin.

 

 

C:\Program Files\VSoft Technologies\ContinuaCI\Server\PostgreSQL\bin>psql -h loc
alhost -p 9001 -U postgres ContinuaCI < \\Hercules\C$\PGBACKUP\PGBACKUP_06112012
1009.bak