My Backup List

[mphayesuk]

I am running Suse 10 64bit and the following list is what I intend to backup on a daily basis for both standard backups and also a disaster recovery.

Disaster Recovery would be a total system crash and I re-install the system using the same passwords and configuration and then replace all files that I have modified.

List:

/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow
/etc/group
/srv/www
/home/admispconfig
/etc/apache2
/etc/proftpd.conf
/etc/proftpd_ispconfig.conf
/etc/ssh
/etc/postfix

Am I missing anything??

Thanks

[till]

I recommend to backup also:

/var/lib/mysql (your mysql databases)
/etc/gshadow (dont know if SuSE has this file too)

If you use mbox format for mail storage, backup also:

/var/spool/mail

[mphayesuk]

I use maildir so thats not a problem. Thanks for the information.

Will I need to temp stop any services in order to tar them. Like apache and ispconfig ect.... I thought I read in another post that you have to do some special commands to backup sql databases.

Thanks

[falko]

No, you don't need to stop services.

If you want to back up MySQL databases, I'd use this way: http://www.howtoforge.com/faq/6_3_en.html

[sjau]

If you want to make backups for each individual mysql-db you can use that:

#Dump new files
USER=root
PASSWORD=.........
HOST=localhost

for i in $(echo 'SHOW DATABASES;' | mysql -u$USER -p$PASSWORD -h$HOST|grep -v '^Database$'); do
mysqldump \
-u$USER -p$PASSWORD -h$HOST \
-Q -c -C --add-drop-table --add-locks --quick --lock-tables \
$i > /mysql_backup/$i.sql;
done;

Just alther the paramaters to what you need.

[mphayesuk]

Falko using the method described in your link, if I am reading it right this would require me to know the names of all the databases so if I have 100 customers each with 2 databases that would mean 200 mysql databases so I would need a method that would just backup all of them.....

I think the method left by sjau would do this without any human interaction ie if one night I have 200 databases then all of these would get backed up if on the next night there are 201 I dont need to alter any scripts the new database would get backed up. Am I right in thinking this???

Thanks

[falko]

Originally Posted by mphayesuk

Falko using the method described in your link, if I am reading it right this would require me to know the names of all the databases so if I have 100 customers each with 2 databases that would mean 200 mysql databases so I would need a method that would just backup all of them.....

Yes, that right.

Originally Posted by mphayesuk

I think the method left by sjau would do this without any human interaction ie if one night I have 200 databases then all of these would get backed up if on the next night there are 201 I dont need to alter any scripts the new database would get backed up. Am I right in thinking this???

That's also correct.

[mphayesuk]

Do I need to backup /var/lib/mysql if I am going to include the code by sjau in my backup script.

[falko]

No, either back up using sjau's way, or back up /var/lib/mysql. Otherwise you back up the same data twice.

[mphayesuk]

Are there any pros and cons of the two methods.

1) Will backing up /var/lib/mysql using tar and then restoring using tar get anything wrong corrupt data ect...

2) Which is the best method... what would you recommend.

Thanks