DEV Community: Gheorghe Avram

How I do local development CockroachDB Backups

Gheorghe Avram — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 21:00:00 +0000

I have this taskfile tasks to make running commands easier:

version: 3
tasks:
  backup:
    desc: Backup the local CockroachDB database
    cmds:
      - task: backup-to
        vars:
          FOLDER: "backup/local-node-backup"
  restore:
    desc: Restore the local CockroachDB backup database
    cmds:
      - task: restore-from
        vars:
          FOLDER: "backup/local-node-backup"
  backup-to:
    requires:
      vars:
        - FOLDER
    cmds:
      - cmd: mkdir -p cockroach-extern
        ignore_error: true
      - |
        cockroach sql --insecure --host=localhost --port=26257 --execute="BACKUP INTO 'nodelocal://1/{{.FOLDER}}';"
  restore-from:
    requires:
      vars:
        - FOLDER
    cmds:
      - |
        cockroach sql --insecure --host=localhost --port=26257 --execute="DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS defaultdb;"
      - |
        cockroach sql --insecure --host=localhost --port=26257 --execute="RESTORE DATABASE defaultdb FROM LATEST IN 'nodelocal://1/{{.FOLDER}}';"

And I have my docker-compose.yml setup like this:

services:
    crdb:
        image: cockroachdb/cockroach:latest-v25.1
        ports:
            - '26257:26257'
            - '8080:8080'
        command: start-single-node --insecure
        volumes:
            - crdb:/cockroach/cockroach-data
            - type: bind
              source: ./cockroach-extern
              target: /cockroach/cockroach-data/extern
volumes:
    crdb:

And from my own project docs:

Database Backup and Restore

You will notice in docker-compose.yaml these few lines of code at the database declaration. Let me explain what's going on.

    - type: bind
      source: ./cockroach-extern
      target: /cockroach/cockroach-data/extern

CockroachDB saves all backups, exports etc. to folder /cockroach/cockroach-data/extern so we will bind this folder
to a local folder in the project directory so we can have access to this data and manipulate it.

Backups

Info about backups https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/take-full-and-incremental-backups

To run a full backup we will run the following command

BACKUP TO 'nodelocal://1/cockroach-backup';

This will backup all the data into the cluster to the local directory of nodeID 1 and into the cockroach-backup folder
in the extern root directory of the respective node.

Now if you look into the local folder you will notice ./cockroach-extern/cockroach-backup contains some data.

Restores

To run a restore of defaultdb, the database the app uses locally we have to run the following command

RESTORE DATABASE defaultdb FROM LATEST IN 'nodelocal://1/cockroach-backup' WITH new_db_name = 'new_defaultdb';

This command will look at the LATEST backup in the cockroach-backup folder and will restore database defaultdb and
assign it a new name called new_defaultdb.
Now you can access the restored version of the database by changing the connection string to point to new_defaultdb.

How to install OBS Plugins on MacOS

Gheorghe Avram — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 12:40:38 +0000

Originally posted on my personal blog

There are two ways to install OBS Plugins on MacOS.
We will be installing OBS Virtual Background Plugin in both examples. Download the zip file and extract it. Normally it should contain a bin and data folder.

Example for OBS Virtual Background Plugin:

First Method

This method is simpler but you may encounter issues when running the plugin.

Go to the folder ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio.

If you navigate to it manually through Finder go to your user directory, right click and select Show View Options and then check the Show Library Folder checkbox as pictured below.

Once you are in the obs-studio folder you will find a plugins folder. If you don't find it, create it yourself. After that copy the entire folder into plugins (in my case would be obs-virtualbg which contains both the bin and data folder).

Start OBS.

Now you might notice you get an error message as pictured below, if this happens try the second method and make sure to delete the folder you just copied from the plugins folder.

Second Method

Go to the Applications folder and find your .app file. Either OBS.app or another name for a modified version, I am using Stream Elements OBS so for me it is SE.Live.app. Right Click and select Show Package Contents, after that enter the Contents folder.

Add the binary

In the folder of the extension, you have extracted previously, you will find a .so file in the bin folder. Copy that file to the Plugins folder. In my case I copy obs-virtualbg.so to the Plugins folder. If it asks you for a password or elevated permissions provide it so it can copy the file.

Add the data

To add the data we have to go to Resources -> data -> obs-plugins.

In here create a folder with the same name as the .so file. I will create a folder with the name obs-virtualbg and copy inside it the contents of the data folder from the original plugin folder.

Now close the window and start OBS. You should find that obs started with no warning and the plugin runs as it should.

How to set up a Smashing dashboard on your Raspberry Pi

Gheorghe Avram — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 13:26:58 +0000

As an OS we are going to use DietPi because it automates most of the setups. There is a 64Bit version available but at the time of writing this, I can't install Chromium on it.

To install DietPi you can follow their Guide. For flashing I used RPi Imager.

Now you should be here:

First Run

Enter Software Optimised, select Chromium (using the arrows and spacebar), and then press Enter.

After that go to DietPi-Config -> Display Options -> Display Resolution and select the current screen resolution.

After that go back until you see AutoStart Options, select Chromium with Enter, you can leave the URL as it is and make sure the user is set to root. Go all the way back by selecting Exit.

Then go to Software Additional and select Build-Essentials, Git, Node.JS, and your editor of choice. Exit by pressing Enter. (Pressing Esc will clear your Settings)

And finally, select Install and reboot at the end.

Setting up Chromium

In some cases, the window size of Chromium might be smaller than the resolution. Looking like this:

To fix this we have to edit these variables in the file at /boot/dietpi.txt and set them to your appropriate resolution:

SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_RES_X=1280
SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_RES_Y=720

After that, we have to modify the chromium autostart script to fix some glaring issues. It can be found here /var/lib/dietpi/dietpi-software/installed/chromium-autostart.sh

CHROMIUM_OPTS="--kiosk --test-type --window-size=$RES_X,$RES_Y --start-fullscreen --start-maximized --window-position=0,0"

To this variable add these options:

--no-default-browser-check Disables the default browser check. Useful for UI/browser tests where we want to avoid having the default browser info-bar displayed.
--disable-component-update Disable the popup for updating chromium or saying it can't update chromium.
--no-first-run Skip First Run tasks, whether or not it's actually the First Run.

More info on command line switches here

Right before:

xinit $FP_CHROMIUM $CHROMIUM_OPTS

add these commands:

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State'
sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

These set in the local chromium settings the exited_cleanly value, it tells chromium it always exited as it should. This being a RaspberryPi, Chromium might close directly and we don't want to see the "Restore Previous Session" pop-up.

In the end, you should have a file that looks like this

#!/bin/bash
# Autostart run script for Kiosk mode, based on @AYapejian https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/1737#issue-318697621
# - Please see /root/.chromium-browser.init (and /etc/chromium.d/custom_flags) for additional egl/gl init options

# Command line switches https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
# --test-type gets rid of some of the chromium warnings that you may or may not care about in kiosk on a LAN
# --pull-to-refresh=1
# --ash-host-window-bounds="400,300"

# Resolution to use for kiosk mode should ideally match current system resolution
RES_X=$(sed -n '/^[[:blank:]]*SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_RES_X=/{s/^[^=]*=//p;q}' /boot/dietpi.txt)
RES_Y=$(sed -n '/^[[:blank:]]*SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_RES_Y=/{s/^[^=]*=//p;q}' /boot/dietpi.txt)

CHROMIUM_OPTS="--kiosk --test-type --no-default-browser-check --no-first-run --disable-component-update --window-size=$RES_X,$RES_Y --start-fullscreen --start-maximized --window-position=0,0"
# If you want tablet mode, uncomment the next line.
#CHROMIUM_OPTS+=' --force-tablet-mode --tablet-ui'

# Add URL for the first run:
URL=$(sed -n '/^[[:blank:]]*SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_AUTOSTART_URL=/{s/^[^=]*=//p;q}' /boot/dietpi.txt)
CHROMIUM_OPTS+=" --homepage $URL"

# Find absolute file path location of Chromium binary.
FP_CHROMIUM=$(command -v chromium)
if [[ ! $FP_CHROMIUM ]]; then

        # Assume RPi
        FP_CHROMIUM="$(command -v chromium-browser)"

fi

sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/' ~/.config/chromium/'Local State'
sed -i 's/"exited_cleanly":false/"exited_cleanly":true/; s/"exit_type":"[^"]\+"/"exit_type":"Normal"/' ~/.config/chromium/Default/Preferences

xinit $FP_CHROMIUM $CHROMIUM_OPTS

Setting up Smashing

Smashing is a Sinatra based framework that lets you build beautiful dashboards. (from their docs)

# Install ruby
sudo apt install ruby-dev
# Install gems
sudo gem install smashing bundler
# Generate sample project
smashing new sample_dashboard
cd sample_dashboard
# Install dependencies
bundle install
# Run
smashing start

Now you should be able to connect to it on localhost, or using the LAN address of the Raspberry Pi on port 3030 and it should look something like this:

Now that we know it works we need to set up the service that autostarts the dashboard and tell chromium to load our link on boot.

Create a file called smashing.service in path /etc/systemd/system containing:

[Unit]
Description=Start Smashing Dashboard
Before=graphical.target
After=network.target remote-fs.target

[Service]
Type=exec
Restart=always
RestartSec=60
TimeoutSec=5min
KillMode=control-group
GuessMainPID=no
User=dietpi
Group=dietpi
WorkingDirectory=/home/dietpi/sample_dashboard
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/smashing start
#ExecStop=/usr/local/bin/smashing stop
PrivateTmp=true
PrivateDevices=true
ProtectSystem=full
MountFlags=private
NoNewPrivileges=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Make sure to change the WorkingDirectory to the path where your dashboard is at.

More info about the service options here

After that do:

# Reload the Daemon to see our changes
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Start smashing on boot
sudo systemctl enable smashing

And to modify the link that Chromium loads we can either modify from the TUI using the app dietpi-config or modify the variable SOFTWARE_CHROMIUM_AUTOSTART_URL in /boot/dietpi.txt and set it to http://localhost:3030

Now reboot and it should automagically load the dashboard full-screen on boot having this as a final result:

More info on Smashing here

If you want to have more control over the performance of the smashing service you can use dietpi-services.

DietPi has a lot of tooling that makes your life with a RaspberryPi much much better and I recommend looking more into it.