For orienteering race timing, Meos is my first choice option.
It has a client-server mode allowing several laptops to work on the same races on a local network. In that mode, there is a MySQL database server running on one of the computers.
Despite all the nice features, I identified one major drawback: for the builtin backup to work, you must keep at least one Meos application open on each race of your event at all times, with the builtin backup service running. This means that the builtin backup service must also be restarted whenever you restart Meos.
When you organise several races on the same day/period, you may be switching races several times in order to perform changes to all races (on-site registration for instance, ...).
My experience is that we tend to forget to restart Meos services from time to time.
The goal of meosbackup is to perform this backup in the background for all races, letting your start/stop/restart Meos as you need without having to worry about backups.
In client-server mode, Meos stores all data in MySQL. For a given race all data are stored a separate database. Meos also keeps tracks of all races inside yet another database called meosmain.
To perform a backup, you therefore need to backup the meosmain database, and the database of all races you may be modifying during the day(s). meosbackup will perform that backup every minute on a removable storage media (USB stick of SD card for instance).
In the event of a server crash, or a human mistake, you want to be able restore the database without additional stress. So you should have another instance of MySQL server ready on a spare computer. In that disaster event, the restore procedure is simple because with every backup meosbackup also generates recovery instructions on the same removable storage media.
Obviously, you should test the restore procedure on the spare computer!
You need to install
- Python 3 with:
- mysql-connector-python
- shedule
Use:
pip install mysql-connector-python
pip install schedule
(you may need to use pip3 instead)
Add mysqldump folder to the PATH
See https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_lower_case_table_names
sudo debconf-set-selections <<< "mysql-server mysql-server/lowercase-table-names select Enabled"
sudo apt instll mysql-server
sudo mysql
then on the SQL prompt
create user meos IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'themeospassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO meos;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
To restore on another server:
mysql -u meos < output/meosmain_<date>.dump.sql
mysql -u meos < output/2021_the_race_<date>.dump.sql