Tutorials

Each tutorial is a sequence you follow start to finish, against a throwaway database you create as you go. Nothing is assumed: no pre-existing environment, no prior Sentinel knowledge beyond the quickstart.

Tutorials teach by doing. If you would rather understand the machinery first, read the concepts; if you already know what you need and want the exact flag, use the reference.

Pick your engine

Engine	Track	Verified by
PostgreSQL	Start here	Running it end to end against a real container
MySQL	Start here	Reading the source
MariaDB	Start here	Reading the source
MongoDB	Start here	Reading the source

The distinction in that last column is worth knowing. Every command, flag and configuration key on every track was checked against the shipped binary, so none of them is invented. But only the PostgreSQL track was written by actually running it, with each expected output captured from a real session. The other three derive their expected results from the code and describe in prose what you should observe, rather than showing a transcript nobody produced.

Where a step cannot work in the current release, the track says so and shows the real failure instead of skipping it. That happens more than it should: point-in-time recovery cannot be planned for any engine (#148), and incremental restore fails while staging its baseline (#150). Incremental backup works, and each track covers it.

Before you start

You will need Docker, so that each track can hand you a disposable database rather than asking you to find one. The repository's own infra/docker/docker-compose.yml brings up an instance of every supported engine if you prefer that to a single container.

You will also need Sentinel installed, see Installation, and the client tools for your engine on your PATH.