If the server fries and all you have is your last backup, you at least want it to be congruent in itself / of high integrity. Well, I do.
What I am worried about is that without downtime, one faces a race between the database dump und the copying of static files:
No matter which one you start first or whether you start them both at once, one will finish before the other, allowing itself to be updated by users interacting with the website (e.g., uploading files and/or causing the database content to change).
Sorry if this is a dupe, I haven't found a question that already addresses exactly this.
Do you inspect the db dump and check for mismatches in the list of recorded file names/paths vs. the list of actual files in the static content backup?
I am assuming that the timestamps at filesystem level do not necessarily match those in the database, so comparing last timestamps will not be reliable.
Or are inconsistencies so rare in practice that you just don't care, because a fried server would be a much bigger problem for you to begin with?
If it helps, the relevant services we are using are Apache2, MySQL5.
Thanks!