Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBulletin Cron Based Database Backup

As of 23 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.

This is a cut down version based on a backup system written by Trigunflame for vb 3.0. It is a simple vBulletin cron trigged php system that does a dump of your database - either as one complete file, or as one file per table. Especially useful now that IB removed the old ACP backup option in vBulletin 4. Files can be (G)Zipped to save space.

All the options are located in the ACP in vBulletin Options >> vBulletin Automatic Backup

To install, download and unzip the files, and follow the instructions in the text file.


History:

v4.0.1 : 28-Dec-2009 : Initial release for vb 4.0.0 Gold.
v4.0.2 : 29-Dec-2009 : Added ability to block process larger tables.
v4.0.3 : 27-Jun-2010 : Added Gzip option.

v4.1.0 : 04-Dec-2010 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.0.

v4.1.7.0 : 16-Oct-2011 : Updated for vBulletin 4.1.7.

v4.2.0.0 : 24-May-2012 : Updated for vBulletin 4.2.0.
v4.2.0.1 : 17-Mar-2013 : Removed vboptions from backup call..
v4.2.0.2 : 25-Nov-2013 : Fix php 5.3 deprecated warnings, added mysqldump backup.

[thenashy]

I get this when trying to write the backup.

Automatic Database Backup for vBulletin

Backup Error : Could not write to destination file ( ../../backups/2013-06-01/Forum-2013-06-01-Vb_access.sql )

Permissions seem fine to me.

[Shaybloom]

now ONLY THING IS THIS I'M GETTING AN ERROR

Backup Error : Could not write to destination file ( home2/gagalitt/backups/2013-06-08/Forum-2013-06-08-Gagalittaccess.sql )

[Paul M]

Your web server doesnt have permission to write the files.

[My Dark Tower]

finally got my path correct, works fine, thank you

[James The Cat]

Paul you are a God dude! Thank You So Much this is going to save people's bottoms without a doubt and if I would have found it last week it would have definitely would have helped me out last night, VB support Trevor is a very nice guy but how many of us have SSH access to our servers?

[The_Hawk]

I installed this mod today and then added in a few extra steps

Originally Posted by charlesr

I haven't tried it myself. I googled and found this which should probably work: http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html and could include your forum filesystem as well as the db backup. Please report back on your progress

Originally Posted by betterthanyours

I do have shell access to both servers. Is there a tutorial on this anywhere?

Originally Posted by charlesr

If you have server access to two servers you could set up an rsync with ssh on a cronjob to sync the backups created by this mod to a remote server. Probably.

Using this to set up the passwords for SSH/RSYNC:
http://ericlondon.com/posts/221-sett...d-rsync-backup

I then set up a script to run in a cron job every day to take the output from this mod (the SQL database backup) as well as grabbing my two other SQL databases (currently a wordpress and vb5 testing install, both of which are tiny) and doing a full rsync of the public_html directory which ends up looking something like this:

#!/bin/bash
# Setup Filename & Date
NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
FILE1="$NOW.wordpress.sql"
FILE1Z="$NOW.wordpress.sql.tar.gz"
FILE2="$NOW.vb5test.sql"
FILE2Z="$NOW.vb5test.sql.tar.gz"

# Move to directory
cd /home/USERFOLDER/backup

# Dump SQL databases
mysqldump -pPASSWORD -u SQLUSER SQLWORDPRESSDATABASE > $FILE1
mysqldump -pPASSWORD -u SQLUSER SQLVBULLETINDATABASE > $FILE2

# Compress Files
tar -pczf $FILE1Z /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE1
tar -pczf $FILE2Z /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE2

# Delete Backups
rm -rf /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE1
rm -rf /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE2

# Sync SQL Files
rsync -avz /home/USERFOLDER/backup/ USER@IPADDRESS:~/backupfolder/sql_backups/

# Move to directory
cd /home/USERFOLDER/backup

# Delete SQL Backups from local server (Forum* covers all outputs from this mod as I have used the prefix)
rm -rf Forum*
rm -rf /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE1Z
rm -rf /home/USERFOLDER/backup/$FILE2Z

# Sync public_html Folder
rsync -avz /home/USERFOLDER/public_html/ USER@IPADDRESS:~/backupfolder/public_html/

My cron job looks like this:

/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/backup.sh >> /home/USERFOLDER/backup/backup.log 2>&1


This script is a little dirty and could be cleaned up a little, but it does work and it give me pretty much a full backup of my system for later use. Any comments are welcome.

[Shaybloom]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Your web server doesnt have permission to write the files.

How do i solve this sir?

[Paul M]

Fix the permissions

If you dont know how to do that yourself, ask someone who does, or speak to your host about how to do it.

[davidg]

Paul this mod is just awesome and working fine for me.
I want to know if u can add password encryption for backups to this mod ?
if server or shared hosting get hacked bad guys can have access to database but they cant do this if database backups are encrypted with good password.
Thank You

[MistyMeanor]

I installed this and could someone please tell me if I created a folder "backups" right outside of my public_html folder... where all do I enter this and how exactly do I type it in? I also selected in the task manager the vbulletin option from the drop down menu... is that correct from what I have read? I have a new forum and when I run it, it just says "done" immediately, but then I don't see a file anywhere. Should I be doing this as one file also? I have no idea what I am doing!