Does xtrabackup(innobackupex) works correctly with innodb_file_per_table (Barracuda)?

Question

Trying backup with Percona Xtrabackup

I tried to use Percona Xtrabackup to backup all InnoDB databases in my MySQL data directory.

After executing the following command:

innobackupex --host=127.0.0.1 --port=3306 --user root --password PASSWD --defaults-file=/path/to/my.cnf --slave-info  /backup/xtrabackup

The process seemed to be completed with the following log:

InnoDB Backup Utility v1.5.1-xtrabackup; Copyright 2003, 2009 Innobase Oy
and Percona LLC and/or its affiliates 2009-2013.  All Rights Reserved.
...
innobackupex: Using mysql server version 5.6.12

innobackupex: Created backup directory /nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21
...
[01] Copying /var/lib/mysql/ibdata1 to /nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/ibdata1
>> log scanned up to (178807644573)
....
140224 00:05:34  innobackupex: completed OK!

Result

However, the result is too small compared to original database files:

# Source database
# du -sm /var/lib/mysql/
19G     /var/lib/mysql/

# Xtrabackup result
# du -sm /nobackup/xtrabackup
455M    /nobackup/xtrabackup

Can Xtrabackup handle databases with innodb_file_per_table?

My InnoDB configuration (in /path/to/my.cnf) are as following:

innodb_file_per_table
innodb_file_format=Barracuda

Looking at the execution log, it shows the program only copied ibdata1 but not other many *.idb files.

I wonder if Xtrabackup cannot handle databases stored with innodb_file_per_table. I couldn’t find any hints in its documentation.

Is that true, or any solutions/ideas?

edit 1: The result seems not to be compressed

# find /nobackup/xtrabackup
/nobackup/xtrabackup
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/xtrabackup_logfile
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/ibdata1
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/xtrabackup_checkpoints
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/backup-my.cnf
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/2014-02-24_00-04-21
/nobackup/xtrabackup/2014-02-24_00-04-21/xtrabackup_binary

Answer 1

I found it.

my.cnf file did not contain datadir= configuration directive. I had passed --datadir option to the mysqld program instead of putting it on my.cnf.

This issue has been solved by just adding datadir= configuration to my.cnf.