Geeklog Forums

phpwebhosting, who host my site, have had a major server failure. The initial words from them leave some question as to whether they will be able to retrieve the data. They are getting a new server ready for us users to upload from our backups.

Well, I haven't been as religious about my site backups as I should have been. My last backup was 12 days ago, before I installed the GL Forum. So I may get to do that installation again, plus recreate the content I've added in the last 12 days.

Now I want to find an easy way to backup my site regularly. The site is hosted on a RedHat server. Obviously I need to get the backup files off that server to my machine at home. Has anyone created a backup script that I could run as a cron job, or should I start trying to roll my own? I'm a bit hesitant to start writing my own script, as I'm sure I only am aware of some of the issues, and the issues that I am aware of have me stumped.

Issues

• How do I get the database backup and file tarball from the server to my site, automatically?
• How do I delete the older backups on the server, to keep the total amount of used space from exploding? The database backups are owned by "nobody", and my account doesn't have sufficient permissions to destroy them.

Backup your sites!

Kevin Horton

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Kevin Horton

This backup script by Tony is a good starting point. After you've got that one running, you only need to figure out how to download the backups regularly ...

bye, Dirk

I did up a backup plugin and asked for beta testers here two weeks ago and was willing to add features others thought were needed. I got zero emails from volunteers. ZERO. So, it's only being used by me and a couple friends. My plugin deletes old backups fine on our systems. Will it work on yours? I have no idea.

Dirk - thanks for the pointer to the script - I'll try it out once I'm back up. I'm still not sure how I'll automate getting the files to my system. I'll have to see if I can figure out how to send attachments with sendmail. Rawdata - I don't get here every day, so I missed the call for backup plugin testing. I'm game to test it for you, once I get my site back up.---Kevin

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Kevin Horton

Fair enough. I'm finishing up another plugin right now. I should have time again in a couple days. Send me an email and I'll send you the files. Before doing that though please test out Tony's script first and let me know if you had any trouble backing up your database and/or deleting the files.

We're using Tony's script to backup the geeklog.net database. I also have it working on geeklog.info. You only need to remember to download the backups occassionally ... bye, Dirk

I found an easy to use email class. I tested it out this morning. It's been working okay on my system in sending downloads to me via email. If Tony's script works, we can add a few lines to it so he can have the downloads automatically emailed to him using the same cron job. If Tony's doesn't, I have another script he can run as a cron but he needs to test it out to see it works on his system.