Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Site Backup (easily backup your forum files)

What is this?
This is a script that will let you easily back up your website files, with some nifty features.

Why?
We all know backups are important, but they're also tricky. If you are on shared hosting with no shell access then you have to backup via FTP which is time consuming and a bit messy. Even if you have shell access you still have to manually type in the command to tar it all up, then download it, then delete the tar. This script does it all for you.


Okay, talk me through it
It's pretty simple really. Once you've uploaded and configured the script (read the install.txt), run it and you'll be presented with a list of folders and files in your forum root. You can choose the ones you want, click Backup! and it will put them into a tarball (which can be optionally gzipped). You can then download that tarball and delete it for security reasons, all from this script.
The advantage of being able to pick and choose the files you grab is that you don't have to keep downloading the files that never change. So say you have the images dir which never changes, and you have an uploads dir which does. It makes no sense wasting bandwidth continually grabbing the images dir.

Simply put: Your site is put into one file which is a lot easier to download than hundreds of seperate ones. It can be optionally gzipped to reduce the download size a bit more, and it's jus all round convenient.

Important
I cannot gaurentee this will work. It requires the tar executable to be in place and I believe that's only present in linux operating systems. It also requires you to be able to execute it. Safe mode may stop you doing so. Please don't ask me for support on this, I don't know the answers. I just know it works on my host so I thought I'd share.
Because I'm no expert I cannot be liable for any theft or problems occuring from this script. Run at your own risk!

Less important, but still important
When you do a backup, make sure you have enough space to actually fit the tar file. So if your admincp is 2mb, you'll need 2mb free on your hosting plan, or slightly less using gzip.


Questions
Is it secure?
Yes. As much as I know how to make it:
- You choose the backup filename. Even though it will be deleted as soon as you've downloaded it, this helps prevent anyone else from guessing the filename and downloading it at the same time
- It's restricted to superadministrators only, as defined in config.php.

What's to stop people browsing to the backup directory and seeing my backup?
There should be no backup except during download, however during download times there is a blank index file in the backup directory. If your web server is set up properly then it's extremely difficult to guess the filename you chose. Even I wouldn't be able to get hold of it without FTP details.

Why not just use cpanel's backup?
The only real advantage over cpanel's backup is you can choose the files you want, whereas cpanel dumps the entire public_html folder, and databases, and .... into it. I don't think cpanel provides a gzip option either.

Is a database backup included?
At this time, no. Maybe in the future if I can figure out how to do it.

Can this script wipe my files?
No. The only single thing it's capable of deleting is the backup file which you create and name.

The title says "forum files", what about CMS?
Truthfully I don't know because I don't have CMS. The way the admincp global works is it seems to put the forum root as the current working directory. I don't know if that means site root in the case of CMS, or just forum root. Best way to find out is run it and see which directories are listed.
If there is no CMS, I may look into including that or full website backup, if the demand is high enough.

Why doesn't it have anything in the vB options?
Security. Read the first few lines of the script itself for more details.

Can this be put on cronjob/scheduled task?
Nope. It's not designed as that at the moment although it wouldn't be too unsafe to do so. Maybe in the future when I know the commands and directory bits work properly.

What about sending the backup to another server, via ftp?
In future possibly, depends on demand.

Restoration option?
Not at present, depends on demand.

What is a tarball (.tar) anyway?
I'm not sure of the origins or if it's a *nix "standard" but it seems to be. Basically it's just a form of archiving files, sort of like zip or rar. You can also gzip the files on top, making a zipped tarball (.tgz) WinRar will handle the file. If you want a free alternative try www.nonags.com (freeware - no nags)

Can you help me with...
As I said in the important part, this isn't an area of expertise to me. If you have a feature suggestion or have found a bug I'll do my best to fix it, but if it just plain doesn't work then I might be able to help, I might not.

[bairy]

I understand what you mean.
What I mean is that a tarball is a single file containing everything put into it. So if you have 1000 attachments at 2mb each then it'll go into one big file of around the 2gb mark.
Some hosts don't allow any one file at that kind of size, and the linux filesystem may also have restrictions on it.

So in terms of the script, there's no reason it won't work, but there might be technical limitations that will stop it.

[transitbus]

Just installed it. Works perfectly. Thanks for making this.

[kall]

Nice.

A suggestion: You mention 'those directories that dont change' in the first post, but I can't see anything about 'last modified date' in the screenshots.

Perhaps something like that, to give people an idea of what needs backing up?

Maybe a 'has changed since last backup?' flag?

[bairy]

I did think about putting some info in the listings, like size. Last modified is a good idea too.
I wrote the whole thing in about 6 hours today and wanted to see if:
a) it would work on other servers
b) many people would be interested

Early impressions seem to indicate that it could be relatively popular, especially if I make it more functional.

[da420]

Very nice. I am very interested as it is kind of a mental thing in keeping back ups. The more current the back up the more at ease I am. I try and take a file structure back up at least once a week, but sometimes I cannot get around to it, and it gets done once a month, if that. This will help as all I will need to do is login to FTP and upload the single file.

This along with Paul M's auto database back up will be very helpful in the occurance something should happen so that we have the most up to date backup of the files, and getting the site back up in working order ASAP.

I will probably be installing this tonight.

Thanks!

[projectego]

Looks very helpful! I'll be sure to check this out...

[DPSR]

Hey bairy, you made my day bro , it worked.. it made a backup .tar file of 1.5GB in about 30 minutes.

Although, it didn't gave any confirmation message from vbulletin control pannel.

But still it rocks!!!!

[Quarterbore]

I am some confused as this didn't work for me when I tried....

This should be compatable with 3.6.0 right? I will have to set up a developmental server and see if I can figure out if I have a conflict somewhere...

I would love to be able to customize this to so only backup my most critical directories (say classifieds or paid parts of the site) and do a nightly backup of these critical files via CRON or scheduled tasks...

[bairy]

Originally Posted by DPSR

Hey bairy, you made my day bro , it worked.. it made a backup .tar file of 1.5GB in about 30 minutes.

Although, it didn't gave any confirmation message from vbulletin control pannel.

But still it rocks!!!!

The web server software, usually apache, generally has a timeout (default 5 mins I believe). After that time it will just ...stop... transmitting. Basically that means you won't get the confirm message. I don't know if it'll carry on in the background on all servers, lucky that it did for you.


Quarterbone,
As I said in the intro, I don't know how to debug this because I don't fully understand how web servers have their servers set up. It works on 3.6 and "compatible" hosts. They are, so far as I can work out, those which let you run exec() and have the tar executable installed. Cron jobs (etc) are planned for future versions.

[Quarterbore]

OK, I have servers at three different hosts so I will set up some developmental forums on them and see if there is a possible php or mysql issue... I love the idea so I will work on resolving my issues...