Restore says "must specify path to backup directory"

InfluxDB 2
,
1

I’m trying to move a full backup of a running influxdb to another machine. I did the following.

I backed up all data from my influx, version 2.0.4, by issuing:

$ influx backup --host http://localhost:8086 backup/

Obs: Omitting --host but giving the --token gives me Error: Unauthorized access.. So I kept --host and it was enough for influx backup to work.

In that directory there is:

$ ls backup
20210513T141340Z.bolt        20210513T141340Z.s17.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.manifest    20210513T141340Z.s18.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s10.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s1.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s11.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s2.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s12.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s3.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s13.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s4.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s14.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s5.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s15.tar.gz  20210513T141340Z.s6.tar.gz
20210513T141340Z.s16.tar.gz

Now at the machine where I will restore

I copied all files from the first machine to a local path using scp:

$ scp machinetobackupfrom@ip:/path/to/backup/* /local/path/to/backup/

I extracted influx binaries:

$ tar xvfz influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Current directory looks like this:

$ ls
backup
influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64
influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64.tar.gz
config.yaml

My config.yaml is:

$ cat config.yaml 
engine-path: /data/influxdbv2/engine
http-bind-address: ":8085"
bolt-path: /data/influxdbv2/influxd.bolt

I have cleaned /data/influxdbv2/ directory:

$ rm -r /data/influxdbv2/*

When I try to restore the data I get this error:

$ influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64/influx restore --full --input backup
Error: must specify path to backup directory
See 'influx restore -h' for help

Then I tried to restore the data with influxd running.
I go through influxd setup and start my influx like this, as it reads the config.yaml file at current directory:

$ influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64/influxd

I tried to restore the data again but I get the same Error: must specify path to backup directory.

Even using full path for --input I get that error.

$ influxdb2-2.0.4-linux-amd64/influx restore --full --input $(pwd)/backup
Error: must specify path to backup directory
See 'influx restore -h' for help

Removing the --input flag gives the same error. It’s clearly not reading this flag.
I have download version 2.0.6 and retried to restore my backup but I still get the same error.
I have no idea what I am doing wrong.

2

@cassiohg sorry for the frustration, after looking at the code I see the help text is incredibly misleading. I’d expect this to work for you:

influx restore --full $(pwd)/backup

I’ll make issues against our public docs site and the main influxdb repo to improve this.

3

Worked perfectly.

The restore steps are

  1. extract influxdb
  2. run influxd
  3. execute influx setup --host <address> --token <source influxdb token>
  4. setup anything as this will be overwritten by the backup’s metadata.
  5. now execute influx restore --full <path/to/backup> --host <address> --token <source influxdb token>

obs: --host can be omitted if default address is http://localhost:8086

I advise coping the token along with the backup when moving things somewhere else. I have my token written on a file just so I can $(cat token) in every cli command.

4

And what if someone doesn’t want to do a full restore? For example, I have a backup taken ages ago from an instance that no longer exists, and I have no idea what the token is, or care about the org and tokens. I just want to get the data in.

Edit: managed to track this down in git. Love when people make things complicated :wink: TL;DR: --input doesnt work, so just put the path as the last argument e.g. influx restore --your --options /var/backup/001

5

According to the restore page in the docs: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/backup-restore/restore/#restore-all-time-series-data
You can just leave out the --full to restore only the time series data.

6

Thanks, that wasn’t the issue though - the vital explanation of “just put path as the last argument” was missing from the thread.