[Xapian-discuss] Care of databases

[James Aylett]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:13:12PM +0930, Frank J Bruzzaniti wrote:

> I'm looking for a little advice regarding how robust the flint databases 
> are and what should be done if omindex's or xapian-compact operations 
> are interrupted.

Flint is designed such that the database won't be corrupted whatever
you do. (Unless you have a hardware failure, or an OS bug or
something.) Interrupting processes in the middle of making changes to
a Flint database will leave you with some changes saved, and some discarded.

> If omindex was to be interrupted halfway through indexing a folder how 
> should it be handled.
> Should I just start re-indexing the folder again?
> Or should I delete the database and start again?

Generally speaking re-indexing will be fine.

> What if xapian-compact was to be interrupted should I delete the 
> "target" database of the merge and leave the source databases intact?

Yes. If xapian-compact doesn't run to completion, you don't know
what's in the destination database, so you'd need to go back to the
source.

> Generally are there any circumstances that require the database to
> be deleted?

There aren't supposed to be any; occasionally we've had bugs that
require the database to be rebuilt from scratch, but the aim
(obviously) is never *need* to do that.

J

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  james at tartarus.org                               uncertaintydivision.org