Suggested enhancement to server.database.backup

[Stephen Crawley]

My understanding is that the current locking behaviour is that the 'server.database.backup' service:

1. requires the database to be unlocked
2. locks the database
3. makes the backup
4. unlocks the database.

If you wanted to backup the database and the file-store, then you might do this:

    server.database.backup :url file:///$dir/database
    server.database.lock :action abort :msg "Backing up assets"
    exec /bin/tar cvfz $dir/assets.tar.gz $stores
    server.database.unlock

but that doesn't give you an atomic snapshot ... because there is a window between the database backup ending and the lock being re-acquired.

How about something like this?

        server.database.lock :action abort :msg "Backing up database and assets"
    server.database.backup :url file:///$dir/database :use-existing-lock true
    exec /bin/tar cvfz $dir/assets.tar.gz $stores
    server.database.unlock

where ":use-existing-lock true" *requires* the database to be already locked by the current session.

-- Steve