Hi there,

I am trying to resolve two issues that I keep reading about but don't have the foggiest clueas to where to start.

1. Site backup

I have different accounts with different hosts. I want to be able to backup one site at one host to a backup site on another host. Can anybody advise EXACTLY how to do this?

2. Web Spider

If I wanted to start a search engine service, what package would do this the best? Is there a free version out there that you know of? And can I - in a limited fashion - run it from a shared host?

Sorry to trouble you with my problems but I figured if you gurus couldn't point me in the right direction then I may as well take up golf :)

You could do one of two things.
1. Set the second host as the 3rd and 4th name server so if the first site goes down the other will pick up. This is the perferred if you want your web site to be have a backup incase of downtime. This is common amoung corporate sites who cannot stand even 1 minute of downtime due to millions of dollars on advertising and sales force.

2. You need to constantly download the data and upload them to the second site.

please read the rules: "Signatures must be kept to a maximum of four lines..."

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/misc.php?s=&action=forum-rules

Sorry :(

no worries... we all make these sorts of mistakes when we first join ;)

He apologized, but didn't fix it. :eek:

well he did... depending on what resolution you are on.

mine is at 1280 X 1024 so his sig just fits into 4 lines. Im presuming if your screen is on a lower resolution... his sig would not fit on 4 lines.

I'm on 800 x 600. Its 8 lines.

--Tina

Not only that, but infinology's post didn't seem to be relevant to the question. Or am I missing something?

1. For backing up one site to another using SSH, you should start in your home directory and type the following from within a secure shell:

tar --ignore-zeros -cz * | ssh -l username remote.host cat >backup.tar.gz

2. I once searched for a decent search engine software, but never found one that was free. So I'm wondering that myself.

Try www.hellcyon.com for the search engine. But it's not free.

Originally posted by NYC

1. Site backup

I have different accounts with different hosts. I want to be able to backup one site at one host to a backup site on another host. Can anybody advise EXACTLY how to do this?



This is a non-trivial problem, and depends a lot on how exactly you want to do the backup (e.g., automatic file copy, rotating DNS, etc), what data you want to back up (files? databases?), what platforms the websites are on, etc. You will probably want someone technically knowledgable to help you with this (i.e., you will want to pay someone to do it or show you how to do it).

For backups I suggest using cron jobs to automatically backup your site every 24 hours.

Originally posted by NYC
2. Web Spider

If I wanted to start a search engine service, what package would do this the best? Is there a free version out there that you know of? And can I - in a limited fashion - run it from a shared host?
You might try Larbin for starters:
http://larbin.sourceforge.net/index-eng.html

I wouldn't run a spider from a shared hosting account though.

This will teach me to be a bit more specific about my needs.

I don't have anything mission critical to back up. I really just need to create a tarball of my site (i can do this) and to then copy it over to a site I have on a different server.

I would prefer to have the tarball created automatically once a week and for it to be downloade/uploaded as well.

The file would approximately be 100 meg in size. This will use my bandwidth but that doesn't bother me.

I had a look at CRON at that confused me but I understand I will probably have to use a cron job to do it automatically (just don't know where to start yet so a pointer in the right direction would be great) I understand that the cron doesn't need me to be online whilst executing though so that's great.

I found a search engine that is not necessarily free but a lot cheaper than the halcyon one:

http://www.xav.com/scripts/search/

I figure I shouldn't try and run a spider off a shared hosting account because it probably hogs the resources - does it?

I want to experiment a bit initially though. What type of account would be suitable for this purpose?

For backups try rsync. It works great... I can get and download all the changes to a site with almost 10,000 files in two minutes.

Owen