Knowledge Base

How to specify a separate debug.log for the backup process?

When running neo4j-admin backup on a running Neo4j instance the backup logs are also written into the existing Neo4j instance debug.log and can get confusing as to which line items in the debug.log is part of backup process and those that are from running Neo4j instance. Hence we recommend having a separate directory where backup debug.log are written.

Here is how to achieve this.

Set the environment variable NEO4J_CONF to point to the new neo4j.conf that you setup for the backup process. Ideally you can copy the neo4j.conf file with the default settings and place it in the folder mentioned in NEO4J_CONF.

$ export NEO4J_CONF=/Users/Documents/backup/
$ echo $NEO4J_CONF
# /Users/Documents/backup/

In the neo4j.conf file set the dbms.directories.logs to point to the backup logs folder.

dbms.directories.logs=/Users/Documents/backup/logs

Then run the backup as:

$ ./neo4j-admin backup --backup-dir=/Users/Documents/backup --name=graph.db.backup

Debug.log for the backup process should be present in the following folder specified /Users/Documents/backup/logs.