{"id":4724,"date":"2019-06-02T00:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catracing.org\/hendrb\/?p=4724"},"modified":"2020-05-25T18:20:15","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T09:20:15","slug":"the-proverbial-second-chance-part-deux-backing-up-your-data-on-a-nix-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.catracing.org\/hendrb\/the-proverbial-second-chance-part-deux-backing-up-your-data-on-a-nix-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The Proverbial Second Chance – Part Deux: Backing Up Your Data On A *NIX System"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Proverbial Second Chance \u2013 Part Deux:<\/span><\/h1>\n

Backing Up Your Data On A *NIX System<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n

 In our previous technical blog  The Proverbial Second Chance (LINK HERE)<\/a><\/span>, we covered backing up a Windows Server using the built in Windows Server Backup utility and mentioned that the following month we will look at built in backup solutions for *Nix systems using built in commands.  I always try and keep my promises., and since it is time to perform a back up my blog anyway.  Let\u2019s get started!  I have broken this blog down into 3 parts.  Part 1 will cover backing up your web application, but not the database.  Part II will cover backing up the database using phpMyAdmin, and part III will cover backing up the filesystem (excluding the web application and database.)<\/p>\n

  Part I would be useful for those that use a web hosting service, or are migrating a self hosted web\/database application to a new server.   Depending on your service provider you may be able to host whatever web application you please, but you don\u2019t actually have access to install executables (your own backup software.).  On the topic of hosting providers and backups.  While it may be part of your service that your host will perform backups, pay close attention to if and how often this is actually being done, what is actually being backed up (Is it a only a file level backup, or is the database included as well).  How much data do they agree to back up (Are you over your limit?).  How do they ensure your data is backed up, and most importantly, if you have an e-commerce site Is your customers personal and transaction data secure?  Is it being encrypted, and how is it stored?  Don\u2019t wait until something has happened to your site.  Ask early, and confirm often!  Do not feel guilty either!  Make sure they are actually providing the services they are promising.<\/p>\n

  So now that we have gotten the pre-ramble out of the way, let\u2019s get into the nuts and bolts of things.  The first and easiest option is to simply compress the files we want to backup and download them.  For this we need access to the service with a shell level access, and sFTP. <\/p>\n

  To outline what we will be doing in part I<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Archiving and compressing our Web Application directory (WordPress  and phpBB) using tar with the gzip option.)<\/li>\n
  2. Copy the file to a thumb drive on my local computer.<\/li>\n
  3. Dump a copy of the MariaDB databases using phpMyAdmin to my local computer and manually copy the file to the external thumb drive.<\/li>\n
  4. Delete the archive on the remote web server.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

      As you can see this is all manual at this point, in a future blog we will take a look at writing a BASH script that will run monthly through a chron job to automate this process.<\/p>\n

      PART  I \u2013 Archiving your application directories.<\/span><\/h2>\n

      The first thing we need to do is archive the directories so that we may download them locally.  We will use the tar command with the gzip option.  So this will archive the entire directory structure, then compress the archive using GZIP.<\/p>\n

      First let\u2019s go to the root of our web application directory. On my server this is \/var\/www\/html<\/p>\n

    So I will ssh into the web server, and at the shell prompt type the following<\/p>\n

    $ cd \/var\/www\/html<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Under the web root, my web applications are in a subdirectory called hendrb, so I want to create a tar archive of hendrb with all files and sub directories and I want to compress them into a .gz archive and place this file in an sftp directory that already exists in my home directory. Even though technically you do NOT need to stop the web server it is a good idea.  This will prevent files from not being copied because they are open for reading.  See the documentation for your specific OS for stopping the web server, or preventing connections to your website.  <\/p>\n

    To TAR the directories, We will enter the following command.<\/p>\n

    $ tar -zcvf ~\/sftp\/crweb_backup0519.tar.gz hendrb<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s break down the command really quickly.<\/p>\n

    Tar, which originally meant “\u2018T\u2019ape ARchive” takes many files and puts them together in a single file (So they may be written to tape.), or saved to disk.  The options we selected -zcvf<\/p>\n