Whats the best way to do backups?

[David Lama]

???

[Zachery]

Depends on what access you have :P a nicely written cron script to backup files and the database nightly/weekly is nice.

[David Lama]

i keep hearing that the backups from admincp with the vbulletin software arent safe and are usually corrupted. but for some reason i trust them more. when i do a backup from my hosts cpanel it doesnt feel complete and it always comes out as a smaller sized file than the one i do with the vbulletin admincp.

and i have no idea how to work with cron, never have touched it yet =/

[Zachery]

They are not safe because of timeouts, and they are not corrupted but rather just not finished depending on sizes.


The backups from cpanel are complete, they do a full mysqldump and then gzip it to be smaller.

[David Lama]

thanks zach!!!

how can i be sure if there was a timeout or not?

and by what size does the problems start coming?

[Zachery]

There is no specific size for vBulletin, I've done 500mb backups from the admincp and others haven't been able to get past 10mb. Its safer to use the cpanel backup.

[David Lama]

thanks again zach!

There is no specific size for vBulletin, I've done 500mb backups from the admincp and others haven't been able to get past 10mb. Its safer to use the cpanel backup.


but shouldnt both backups look more or less the same? the one from vb and the one from cpanel?? cause they look different. start and end differently. even the things in the middle look different. is that weird? and i know the cpanel one is zipped. but even when i unzip it and rename it a sql file it is still smaller than the vbulletin admincp one.

i just did a back up with both minutes away from each other

vbulletin admin cp backup = 62.8 MB (unzipped and renamed a sql file)

my hosts cpanel backup = 55.2 MB (SQL file)

i guess the reason i worry with the cpanel backup the most is because it isnt like the admincp one. at least the admincp backup says "
### VBULLETIN DATABASE DUMP COMPLETED ###" all the way at the bottom. the cpanel backup doesnt. is it suppose to?? if not whats suppose to be all the way at the bottom??

also in cpanel there are 3 different types of backups. aliases, filters something and then the mysql. is this why its smaller than the admincp one? is the admincp backup all 3 from the cpanel one together or something??

[Zachery]

No the AdminCP backup is not compressed at all, the cPanel backup is, thus different sizes.

[David Lama]

i know. but when uncompressed its still a different size. isnt it suppose to be the same afterwards

[Zachery]

A backup made directly from the shell is generally smaller anyway.

[Brandon Sheley]

There are 2 backup hacks that will automatically do a back up and I think even email them to you.
One is here by Paul M I believe, the other is by Ken at vbhackers.com

I use the one by Ken because I seen it before the one here :)

[Eikinskjaldi]

i know. but when uncompressed its still a different size. isnt it suppose to be the same afterwards

The size of the backup will depend on what version of mysqldump is being used and what options you passed to the program. It is possible to generate dumps with very different sizes that contain the same information, though some will be more efficient than others. You should run mysqldump with --opt, though later versions of the program come with this enabled by default.

[David Lama]

uhh how do i run mysqldump with --opt? and how do i know what version i have? thanks!

[Smoothie]

Try this, it works great.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=126925

[Dismounted]

uhh how do i run mysqldump with --opt? and how do i know what version i have? thanks!
Keep in mind that he was referring to shell commands, different scripts use different commands to execute the same task.

[David Lama]

question about the cpanel backups

do cpanel backups also timeout?? like what happens if im doing a cpanel backup and someone posts on my forum while im doing the backup? does that mess something up

also.. heres the ending of a cpanel backup of mine. is this how a cpanel backup is suppose to end?

/;
UNLOCK TABLES;

--
-- Table structure for table `vb_word`
--

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `vb_word`;
CREATE TABLE `vb_word` (
`wordid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`title` char(50) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`wordid`),
UNIQUE KEY `title` (`title`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--
-- Dumping data for table `vb_word`
--

LOCK TABLES `vb_word` WRITE;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `vb_word` DISABLE KEYS */;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `vb_word` ENABLE KEYS */;
UNLOCK TABLES;

/*!40101 SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE */;
/*!40014 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS */;
/*!40014 SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40111 SET SQL_NOTES=@OLD_SQL_NOTES */;

[Marco van Herwaarden]

cPanel backups are not created using a web-based script, but by a task that runs directly on the server. This makes that they should not timeout.

That backup looks good. If the last table in the backup is the 'word' table, then you can assume it is complete.

[David Lama]

thanks alot marco

is there anyway i can make a test forum to test things like installing a backup just so i can get practice for when i'll need to do it for my real forum?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Yes, the License Agreement (http://www.vbulletin.com/order/license_agreement.php) allows for 1 password protected test installation.

[David Lama]

awesome. how do i go about making a test forum?? is there a guide? cause i dont want to end up messing up my actual board while making the test forum

[dismas]

Just create it in a seperate directory called 'testvb'. Did you set up your current forum in a directory called 'forum' or something similar? It would be exactly like that just in the new testvb directory.

[David Lama]

yea but i sort of had help cause it wasnt easy lol. so i think i'll need a guide just to make sure cause im pretty new at this stuff

[Dismounted]

Simply did what you did when installing vBulletin, except install it at a different directory. Then password protect that directory, via cPanel. You may have to change the database name in the backup file to have it restore to the new database.

[dismas]

so i think i'll need a guide

There is the installation guide at vBulletin.com. Just follow that the same as you would to install the main forum.

[David Lama]

Simply did what you did when installing vBulletin, except install it at a different directory. Then password protect that directory, via cPanel. You may have to change the database name in the backup file to have it restore to the new database.
thanks!

how do I password protect a directory?

and dont put it in the public html section right?

[Dismounted]

No, it's in your cPanel. I think it's called "Web Protect" or something like that.

[edytwinky]

How exactly do you do a backup through cpanel?

[Speysider]

<removed>

[Michael.A]

if you talk about the hosting cpanel

go to backups > Download or Generate a Full Web Site Backup > then you well see on the bottom left Generate backup > done...