ALWAYS Save a Site Backup To Your Computer!

AdamD said:
Not only should people make regular backups, they should also check the integrity of said backups, to.
I take several database backups each day to an offsite FTP, but I also randomly download one and check it's integrity.
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What's an offsite FTP?
 
Thanks Blandt, I'll definitely consider Linode.com

I pay around $40/month now, so I'll have to consider my options. The site isn't HUGE, but I have to check out what the size is so that I know what my minimum needs are. Thanks for the offer of helping to set it up too! :)
 
Elizabeth said:
If I am going to pay for hosting, I would want the company to be located so that the datacenter is their own responsibility. That's also why I have never knowingly gone with a reseller.
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Fair enough.

mjp said:
Wow.

I've been working in the web hosting business for 15 years, and the explanation you've been given is pure B.S. The host is either lying or really, really stupid. Back in 2006, the host I work for was on the receiving end of the biggest DDoS anyone at our upstream providers (two of the world's largest) had ever seen, and we lost no customer data.

Unfortunately, even if your host was honest about the cause of the data loss, that doesn't help you in a situation like this. You can piece together your site through caches and archives, but hopefully everyone reading this will think twice about their hosts. This is really a subject for a different thread, but it just kills me to see people trusting their hard work to incompetents and jerkoffs, and that's what 99% of the "hosts" out there are. This kind of amateur hour stuff really pisses me off, and I'm sorry that some of you had to suffer because of those fools.
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The World Trade Center had security guards and alarm systems, probably some of the best. The Pentagon is a freaking prison, you can't get in or out without passing rigorous security clearance and military guys with guns. I'm sure you'll recall what happened. Calling someone "incompetent" or "jerkoffs" because they experienced a freak accident with the hardware just goes to show you how the true "jerkoff" is. Millions of car accidents happen every year. Most of the time, people are injured, but they are still alive. Do we call the thousands who died in the accident "incompetent jerkoffs", because they're part of the few who couldn't control what happened?

To assume that nothing could go wrong with technology just sets you up for further failure.
 
I was backing up my site last night (still backing it up) as my tech admin use to but he's unavailable to do it now. Doing it as a result of this thread even tho mine is backed up. Anyway, I was having issues a bit ago on the web, my husband asked if it was the server. I told him no, because it was more than JUST my sites. He kept at me...turns out, when I called my ISP, they are having issues. It WASN'T my host, even if he had it in his head it was.
 
ArnyVee said:
Is there a way to generate a full backup and have it sent to yourself? I want to try and automate the process if possible.

If not, what is the easiest way to do this?
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Yes. You can run an automated scripted an email it to yourself. I used to use gmail for this.
 
Peggy said:
How do you set one of those up?
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Depends on your host / hosting package.

My hosts, 1and1 offer a 50gb ftp vault for £35 a month that is not internet accessable for security, but the server can make ftp backups to that space.

If you don't have vps or server level access / your hosts dont offer off server backups, your best bet would be a cron job that dumps your database into a backup file, then copies all your files and the database backup to another ftp with either another host.
 
Ok I gotcha Slavik.

David Thomas, above, is one of the co-founders of Tugoso. I received this email from him a bit ago, I don't think he'll mind if I share it -

<snip>
Once we get the sites back up, I'll personally assist you in setting up a solution to have your backups automatically sent to your PC, along with an offsite server.

Thanks Peggy
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I wish I ran a linux distro on my desktop so I could set up a scheduled rsync job to pull my site's files and databases here as a backup.
 
ArnyVee said:
Thanks Blandt, I'll definitely consider Linode.com

I pay around $40/month now, so I'll have to consider my options. The site isn't HUGE, but I have to check out what the size is so that I know what my minimum needs are. Thanks for the offer of helping to set it up too! :)
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I have helped few members here set up their linode slices ...
What you should consider is the size of your traffic ... if you have less than 100 concurrent users at any given time then a 512 VPS should do just fine with the proper server setup (use of nginx and ditching Cpanel :D)
 
steven s said:
Yes. You can run an automated scripted an email it to yourself. I used to use gmail for this.
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Oh yes, I used to do this, but now even a compressed backup of my server, I can only make 2 of them to a gmail account so I had to scrap that idea, but for a small site it is a very good place to store files as gmail is a very secure, very resiliant service.

This should work

Enable SMTP on your server / vps.
Install the mutt client.
Make a folder called backup on the root of your server.
Make a folder called backupsql on the root of your server.
Go to /usr/bin and make a file called backup.
Place inside that file
Code: 
cd /backup
rm -rf /backup/*
cp /path/to/your/httpdocs /backupsql .
tar zcf backup.tgz *
echo | mutt -a backup.tgz -s "backup_name" your_email@gmail.com
Save the file and chmod it +x
Make another file called backupsql
Place inside that file
Code: 
cd /backupsql
mysqldump -h hostname -u username -p"password" databasename > backup.sql
Save the file and chmod it +x
Open up the cron tab and enter
Code: 
50 23 * * * /usr/bin/backupsql
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/backup
Save it

This should then make a dump of your SQL database at 23:50, then back a backup of the database dump and your http files at 00:00 and email it to your gmail addy. Obviously if you have HUGE sql databases, just set it to run 10 / 20 minutes earlier.
 
If you have a vps/dedi, dropbox combined with a mysqldump cron and some symlinks works a treat for free offsite backups to both their servers and your local pc
 
Blandt said:
You can do it with windows7 It's called Task Scheduler :)
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I thought rsync was linux only but apparently there are windows options as well. I downloaded cwRsync and toyed with it for a bit but I'm not exactly clear on what I need to do to accomplish pulling my home directory out, and maybe some others such as /etc and mysql tables.

Darkimmortal said:
If you have a vps/dedi, dropbox combined with a mysqldump cron and some symlinks works a treat for free offsite backups to both their servers and your local pc
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Can you run dropbox via console only? How much memory does it use?
 
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