gpbackup incremental backup fails with error "index out of range"

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

The incremental backup will fail if there is no relation to be backed up to a single file.

This will occur when all of the following conditions are met:

1. There are no heap tables being backed up.
2. There were no changes made to any of the AO/AOCO tables since the last backup.
3. The option "--single-data-file" is specified

The following is an extract from the output with verbose logging:

20190823:17:12:10 gpbackup:gpadmin:mdw:033731-[DEBUG]:-Verifying gpbackup_helper version
20190823:17:12:10 gpbackup:gpadmin:mdw:033731-[DEBUG]:-Scp oid file to segments
20190823:17:12:10 gpbackup:gpadmin:mdw:033731-[ERROR]:-runtime error: index out of range: goroutine 1 [running]:
runtime/debug.Stack(0xc43523b100, 0x8b1ac0, 0xbcc3c0)
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/debug/stack.go:24 +0xa7
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup.DoTeardown()
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup/backup.go:386 +0x9c
panic(0x8b1ac0, 0xbcc3c0)
        /usr/local/go/src/runtime/panic.go:502 +0x229
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup.backupData(0x0, 0x0, 0x0)
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup/backup.go:312 +0x883
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup.DoBackup()
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/backup/backup.go:181 +0x5b3
main.main.func1(0xc420136f00, 0xc4201a6000, 0x0, 0x9)
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/gpbackup.go:23 +0x51
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).execute(0xc420136f00, 0xc420124300, 0x9, 0x10, 0xc420136f00, 0xc420124300)
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra/command.go:766 +0x2c1
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).ExecuteC(0xc420136f00, 0x93189c, 0xe, 0xbf4c27)
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra/command.go:852 +0x30a
github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).Execute(0xc420136f00, 0x9, 0x9)
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/vendor/github.com/spf13/cobra/command.go:800 +0x2b
main.main()
        /tmp/build/5f8239f8/go/src/github.com/greenplum-db/gpbackup/gpbackup.go:27 +0x18a

Environment

Greenplum Backup and Restore 1.12.0 and below

Resolution

Workaround

Create a dummy heap table in the schema or database that is being backed up.

It does not need to have any data in the table. This will ensure that there will always be at least one table to be backed up.

The incremental backup feature is only valid for AO/AOCO relations. Heap tables are always backed up.

Fix

Issue is fixed in gpbackup version 1.12.1 and above