I want to know why SQLite create two file inside the path.and what is the diffrence these files.
I have a database name mydatabase.
when i see in given path there are two files.
data/data/pack name/databases/....
1- mydatabase
2- mydatabase-journal
mydatabase is main database file, which contains everything about that database.
mydatabase-journal is journal file. It does not exist by default, and only gets created by SQLite when necessary to keep intent log of what SQLite wants to do with database. Basically, this is intent of what should be done to main database file after transaction is properly finished. If you finish all transactions normally and disconnect from database gracefully, -journal file will be normally removed automatically.
If disconnect was abrupt - like process killed or crashed, -journal file will remain and should NOT be deleted. When next time SQLite opens this database once again, it will notice presence of -journal file and will replay or rollback unfinished transactions, such that main database file is consistent and not corrupted.
If you remove -journal file manually, recovery is not guaranteed and database may be completely corrupted - so, DO NOT remove -journal files.
Probably easiest way to properly get rid of -journal files is to do this command:
sqlite3 mysqlitedatabase.db VACUUM
It will VACUUM (optimize) your database and should leave only main file as a result.
Related
If a SQLite database using write-ahead logging is interrupted with un-checkpointed transactions (due to a power failure or whatever), then reopened with the temporary -wal file missing, will the database open cleanly to its state as of the last checkpoint, or will it be corrupted in some way?
We're trying to get SQLite working with iCloud (yes, we know you're not supposed to do that, but we also make a Windows and an Android app and need a cross-platform database solution), and we think that WAL provides a potential way to avoid having to maintain two copies of our database - we'd keep the -wal file outside of iCloud but store the main database in it, thus avoiding the problem of iCloud backing up rollback journals (or backing up databases mid-transaction without those journals).
The file format documentation mentions a "hot WAL file", but this applies only to uncommitted data.
The database file itself does not contain any information about committed data in the -wal file, i.e., transactions before a checkpoint typically do not alter the main database file at all.
Therefore, deleting the -wal file will simply restore the database to the state it was after the last checkpoint (which is outdated, but consistent); all transactions committed later will just be lost.
See the "Checkpointing" section of SQLite's Write-Ahead Logging. From what I understand, the data in the WAL file would simply not be committed.
In other words, you'd lose the data in the .WAL file that hasn't yet been committed, but the main database itself should be perfectly fine.
It can lead to db corruption when WAL file would be deleted during checkpointing operation. In case of unfinished db modification WAL file is necessary to complete the changes, otherwise db file is in transient state. DB and WAL file create complete picture of the db state. It is also explicitly stated in https://www.sqlite.org/howtocorrupt.html#delhotjrnl that "SQLite must see the journal files in order to recover from a crash or power failure."
I have an elevated process and I want to make sure the SQLite files that it creates are readable by other processes. For some reason umask doesn't seem to do what I want (set permissions of sqlite file created by process).
I'm using write-ahead logging, so -wal and -shm files are created in addition to the database file. I want all 3 to be chmodded correctly.
I wonder if it's possible to get in after the SQLite file is created and chmod it.
Possible approaches:
touch all 3 files before SQLite tries to create them, then chmod and hope the mask stays the same
Intercept when the files are created and chmod them.
Work out how to get umask to work for the process.
Mystery option four.
What's the best way to go?
Questions for approaches:
Will SQLite be OK with this?
Do we know when all 3 files are created? Is there some kind of callback I can give a function pointer to? Do we know if the same wal and shm files are around forever? Or are they deleted and re-created?
You can touch the database file before opening it. (When you use the sqlite3 command-line tool to open a new file, but do nothing but begin; and commit;, SQLite itself will create a zero-sized file.)
If you want to intercept file operations, you can register your own VFS.
The -wal and -shm files are created dynamically, but SQLite will give them the same permission bits as the main database file. The comments for robust_open() in os_unix.c say:
If the file creation mode "m" is 0 then set it to the default for
SQLite. The default is SQLITE_DEFAULT_FILE_PERMISSIONS (normally
0644) as modified by the system umask. If m is not 0, then
make the file creation mode be exactly m ignoring the umask.
The m parameter will be non-zero only when creating -wal, -journal,
and -shm files. We want those files to have exactly the same
permissions as their original database, unadulterated by the umask.
In that way, if a database file is -rw-rw-rw or -rw-rw-r-, and a
transaction crashes and leaves behind hot journals, then any
process that is able to write to the database will also be able to
recover the hot journals.
Open read-only
I have a sqlite3 file on a filesystem that belongs to a different user than is running the reading process. I want the reading process to be able to read the file in read-only mode, so I'm passing SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY. I would expect that to work. Surely the idea is that read-only mode works on files that we don't want to write to?
When I prepare my first statement I get
unable to open database file
Similarly if I run the sqlite3 command line tool I get the same result unless I sudo. Which seems to confirm to me that the issue is writeability rather than anything else.
Journal files
The answer to this question seems to suggest that if there are journal files around then read-only access isn't possible.
Why are there journal files? Because another process is writing the file, my user process is trying to open it in read-only. To do this I am using Write-Ahead Logging, which produces two journal files, -shm and -wal. True enough, if I stop the writing process and remove the journal files, my user process can open it in read-only mode.
Incompatibility?
So I have two situations:
If the file belongs to the writing process and also the read-only process, write-ahead logging enables process A to write and process B to read-only
If the file belongs to the writing process but does not belong to the read-only process, the read-only process is blocked from opening read-only.
How do I achieve both of these? To spell it out, I want:
Writing process owns database
Read-only process does not own database
Read-only process cannot write to database
Write-ahead logging is enabled on database
Seems like a simple set of requirements, but I can't see an obvious solution.
**EDIT: ** Going by this documentation, it looks like this isn't possible. Can you suggest any alternative ways to achieve the above?
Yes WAL-journaled databases cannot be opened read-only, explicitly or otherwise (i.e. in the case where the database file is read-only to the process).
If you require that the read-only process absolutely not be allowed to modify the database file, then the only thing that comes to mind is that the write process maintains a not WAL-journal additional copy of the database.
Bottom line: to the best of my knowledge, WAL and read-only can't be done.
I think what the documentation is saying is that the WAL database itself may not be present on a readonly media, which does not necessarily mean you cannot use SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY. In fact, I have successfully opened two connections, a read-write as well as one with SQLITE_OPEN_READONLY, both on a WAL sqlite database. These work just fine. I tested an INSERT query using the read-only connection and the statement correctly returned an error that the database is read-only.
Just make sure that the database is stored on some media with write-access as a -shm file needs to be created and maintained, and so even a 'ready-only' connection may actually physically write something to disk - which doesn't necessarily mean that it can modify data using SQL.
I have a script that was reading data from a sqlite3 database and while this script was running I made a copy of the database cp mydatabase mydatabase.bak. Will this affect either the script that was reading from the db or the copy of the db? I had a look at the sqlite documentation here [0] but I didn't put a lock on the db as per the instructions.
[0] http://www.sqlite.org/backup.html
Copying the file should be analogous to another application reading the database, so it shouldn't be a problem. Multiple applications can safely read the database file at the same time (per the SQLite FAQ).
As another point, consider that you can read from a database even if the database and its directory both lack write permissions. Since in that scenario there's no way for the reading application to be modifying the database file or creating a temp file that needs to be incorporated into it, there's no way for any of a number of simultaneously reading applications to affect what any of the others see.
I've got a sqlite3 DB that I need to read (not write) sitting on a read-only filesystem. There is also a -journal file associated with the database, which is interfering with opening the database because the first thing the sqlite code wants to do is delete that -journal file and it cannot because the filesystem is read-only. Setting the journal_mode to off doesn't help because that apparently only applies to new transactions. Is there a way to tell sqlite3 to simply ignore all mention of a -journal file associated with a DB?
Unfortunately no.
The problem is that the existence of a journal file indicates that a transaction was left in an incomplete state, and needs to be rolled back by transferring the content of the journal file back into the database file.
This requires write access to the file system, and SQLite will not allow you to open the file without performing this rollback.
You can read more about this here: Read-Only Databases:
No SQLite database (regardless of whether or not it is WAL mode) is readable if it is located on read-only media and it requires recovery. So, for example, if an application crashes and leaves an SQLite database with a hot journal, that database cannot be opened unless the opening process has write privilege on the database file, the directory containing the database file, and the hot journal. This is because the incomplete transaction left over from the crash must be rolled back prior to reading the database and that rollback cannot occur without write permission on all files and the directory containing them.
If you don't care about the possible corruption that discarding the journal file might lead to, you can make a copy of the database file, and leave the journal behind. Though, if you have the ability to do that, I would in fact copy the journal file too, to a writable file system, and open that database as normal, which would roll back the transaction properly.
The copy on the read-only file system though is not usable in its current state.