Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : How to create full backup?

[bigu_c]

My VPS has no control panel.

How to create a full backup now?

Thanks!

[DevMonkey]

What exactly are you trying to backup?

All files? Files for a website or service being hosted? Some databases? An image of the entire machine?

This might help for people to help you

[bigu_c]

I want to backup all file in /var/www/html

And mysql database

That all!

Thanks mate!

[TheSimpleHost-Nathan]

To backup all your current files in /var/www/html, log into your shell and use:

tar cpvf html_backup.tar /var/www/html

Are you using PHPMyAdmin or are you modifying MySQL via shell?

[PogiWeb]

After you backup your files where are you storing the files? I hope you have a offsite backup place. If you do have an offsite backup place just rsync everything under the "/" directory over.

[bigu_c]

I don't have phpmyadmin, how to backup mysql database now?

Thanks everyone!

[DevMonkey]

There are various ways to backup what you would like to.

For MySQL databases, have a look at the "mysqldump" utility.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysqldump.html

To backup database "db_a" with the user "name" to a file named "database.sql", do something like this in your shell:

mysqldump -uname -p db_a > database.sql

You will then be prompted to enter the users password a dump of the databse will be saved to "database.sql".

You could use the utility to backup all databases and other things. Have a look at the URL I gave above or just search Google

I'm assuming you're server is running on Linux or similar by the way, not Windows.

[WebbyCart]

You can also just backup the database files in /var/lib/mysql directory.

Regards,
Bobby

[CoderJosh]

I'd recommend using mysqldump as well.

The -A option might be useful for you, to dump all your databases.

[gplhost]

Hi. The solutions above are not so good. Best is to use "automysqlbackup" and fix it in a cron job. It uses mysqldump internally, and will do a backup every day of all the database you ask it to. The most easy way for your case is to set it to dump in /var/www/html. Then use dirvish, on another server, that uses rsync to perform incremental backups. It does it smartly using hardlinks. That way, you don't only have a simple backup, you have a history of it. We use it, and we are more than happy with it: it's the perfect solution.

Thomas

[DevMonkey]

Originally Posted by gplhost

Hi. The solutions above are not so good. Best is to use "automysqlbackup" and fix it in a cron job. It uses mysqldump internally, and will do a backup every day of all the database you ask it to. The most easy way for your case is to set it to dump in /var/www/html. Then use dirvish, on another server, that uses rsync to perform incremental backups. It does it smartly using hardlinks. That way, you don't only have a simple backup, you have a history of it. We use it, and we are more than happy with it: it's the perfect solution.

Thomas

How can you claim the other MySQL backup solutions are not so good when they are the basis of your recommended solution? Obviously if the above solutions are the framework to your solution then they can be manipulated to work in the same way as the script(s) you are using.. I don't think it's a good idea to say they are "not so good" when the primary job they are doing, the actual storing of the database for backup, is exactly the same.

[gplhost]

It's "not so good" because not incremental. My above solution, you are right, is an improvement over mysqldump & rsync. But look at what dirvish does, you will see that it's quite some work, it's not "just a basic rsync"! So, NO, it's not AT ALL exactly the same, I think you are mistaking.

Thomas

[ylsy]

Originally Posted by gplhost

It's "not so good" because not incremental. My above solution, you are right, is an improvement over mysqldump & rsync. But look at what dirvish does, you will see that it's quite some work, it's not "just a basic rsync"! So, NO, it's not AT ALL exactly the same, I think you are mistaking.

Thomas

I actually don't think you can do incremental backups for MySQL database, except if you only backup the binary logs and "hopefully" they'll construct a fully working database when you play it back.

As of mysqldump, it is actually not very good when you have large databases. For MyISAM tables I think it actually locks the whole thing while doing back up. If you have a huge table that takes half a minute to copy out all records, you basically cannot insert any new row during that half minute.

You can also use mysqlhotcopy to copy out the DB files without locking. However you need to do it on the host which runs MySQL (whereas you can run mysqldump on a remote host).

--Scott