Specify alternative taskqueue to dataskq

I have a need to be able to do backups and restores sequential, i.e. back up one account, wait for it to complete, then back up another account... and so on. Likewise for restores, I need to be able to restore an account, wait for it to restore, and then restore another one. I'm doing all of this from the command line.

Now, from my understanding this is possible

https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=198

echo "action=backup&append...blahblah" >>/usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue
/usr/local/directadmin/dataskq d200

for each user and for each restore... I get that.

I suppose my question is... is there anyting inherently wrong with running /usr/local/directadmin/dataskq like this? Over and over and over again? And is there anything wrong with constantly adding backup and restore commands over and over again to /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue?

Would a better solution - and something that might have usefulness for other areas - would be to have a secondary task.queue - or a series of task.queues available ... that don't necessarily run automatically. Or in the simpliest way... specific a path to a task.queue directly to dataskq? Something like:

echo "action=backup&append...blahblah" >/root/mytask.queue
/usr/local/directadmin/dataskq --taskqueue=/root/mytask.queue d200

This way you are not interfering with regular tasks that get added to /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue and you're not interfering with the every minute execution of those tasks. But you're still able to execute certain tasks on a more on-demand basis. It doesn't consist of a lot of extra work - just allowing a taskqueue specific parameter to be passed to dataskq and reading tasks from that file if specified.

Putting everything in /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue like this present a potential race condition. Where a backup/restore task is added to /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue but then the dataskq cron picks up the task before execution of /usr/local/directadmin/dataskq d200 - that's why I think being able to specify an alternative taskqueue file - whether this be user specific or hardcoded in - would be a benefit.

Or is this functionality already existing?

Just a suggestion.


On a somewhat related note. I see different ways of running dataskq from the command-line. Sometimes I see:

/usr/local/directadmin/dataskq d200

other times I see

/usr/local/directadmin/dataskq d800

I don't think it makes any difference. The 200 and 800 are just debugging levels. At least in my particular case, the debugging information isn't all that necessary - just being able to run a process and wait for it to complete before proceeding to the next step.

There is a stand-alone task.queue.cb that CustomBuild uses. So you'd dump your commands to it, and call it like this: It's essentially the exact same thing, except it doesn't do other every-minute-checks, that the normal dataskq call does.

John

Is there anything else that /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue.cb is used for?

While this PROBABLY solves the issue for most intents and purposes, what if you're using this to back up accounts while also running something in CustomBuild? Probably not a scenario that's going to pop up too often. Unless CustomBuild runs automatically at some time?

Just CB.
DA has it's own task.queue.da (diradmin user) for backup crons, but is still called in the same run as the task.queue, so not the same.
The task.queue.cb is only used by custombuild, and not often run... only when CB is run (either by you, or a one-per X cron, as per your options.conf settings, if cron is enabled there).
John