python subprocess and mysqldump

Question

I know parts of this question have been asked before, but I have some related questions.

I'm trying to execute

mysqldump -u uname -ppassword --add-drop-database --databases databaseName | gzip > fileName

I'm potentially dumping a very large (200GB?) db. Is that in itself a dumb thing to do? I then want to send the zipped file over the network for storage, delete the local dump, and purge a couple of tables.

Anyway, I was using subprocess like this, because there doesn't seem to be a way to execute the entire original call without subprocess considering | to be a table name.:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

f = open(FILENAME, 'wb')
args = ['mysqldump', '-u', 'UNAME', '-pPASSWORD', '--add-drop-database', '--databases', 'DB']

p1 = Popen(args, stdout=PIPE)
P2 = Popen('gzip', stdin=p1.stdout, stdout=f)
p2.communicate()

but then I read that communicate caches the data in memory, which wouldn't work for me. Is this true?

What I ended up doing for now is:

import gzip
subprocess.call(args, stdout=f)
f.close()

f = open(filename, 'rb')
zipFilename = filename + '.gz'
f2 = gzip.open(zipFilename, 'wb')
f2.writelines(f)
f2.close()
f.close()

of course this takes a million years, and I hate it.

My Questions: 1. Can I use my first approach on a very large db? 2. Could I possibly pipe the output of mysqldump to a socket and fire it across the network and save it when it arrives, rather than sending a zipped file?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You don't need communicate(). Its only there as a convenience method if you want to read stdout/stderr to completion. But since you are chaining the commands, they are doing that for you. Just wait for them to complete.

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

args = ['mysqldump', '-u', 'UNAME', '-pPASSWORD', '--add-drop-database', '--databases', 'DB']

with open(FILENAME, 'wb', 0) as f:
    p1 = Popen(args, stdout=PIPE)
    p2 = Popen('gzip', stdin=p1.stdout, stdout=f)
p1.stdout.close() # force write error (/SIGPIPE) if p2 dies
p2.wait()
p1.wait()