Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vB Database Backup Pro (Lite) for vb 3.6

This modification is no longer available or supported.

When vb 3.5 first came out I was using this backup system on my vb 3.0 - and having nothing better to use - I converted it to work on vb 3.5 (here) and since then I have cut it down and adapted it for vb 3.6.

The original version was by Trigunflame and the rights to the code were bought by Zoints (D.Chapman) in January. A while ago David gave me permission to release my adaption, but until now I haven't got round to it. Trigunflame did mention a few months ago he was working on a new version, but nothing ever appeared.

I have stripped out much of the extra stuff that I do not use (or indeed, could not get to work). This is a simple (lite) version that does a php based dump of your database either as one file, or one file per table. It's been in use on our forum since the day 3.6 was installed.

Notes:
* I will not add anything new to this, or spend vast amounts of time supporting it.
* This is a Lite version to allow people to use the basic 3.0 backup functionality on 3.6.


History:

v2.10 : First internal version.
v2.11 : Bug fixes, some code changes.
v2.12 : Initial Public Release.

[Neal-UK]

Is doing that safe though? Could it not be "found" by spiders and what not?

[Paul M]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about this line ;

PHP Code:

 $backup['DUMP_PATH'] = DIR.'/../../backups/';  // Path ( With trailing '/' ) 


Please note that the DIR is on the righthand side of the equals, and is a constant created by vbulletin - it is the full path to your forums root folder.

For example (in windows) it might be "d:/wwwroot/forum" - it has NO trailing '/' at the end, so the rest of the path definition adds one - so in this example the path defined above is "d:/wwwroot/forum/../../backups/" - which with the two '../' translates into "d:/backups/" a folder outside your public html folder. That backups folder must be writable by the webserver.

If you just want to specify a direct path then do so - e.g.

PHP Code:

 $backup['DUMP_PATH'] = 'e:/some/path/mybackups/';  // Path ( With trailing '/' ) 


Originally Posted by KoC

Is there any option for upload the file automaticly via ftp

No.

Originally Posted by steadicamop

This works very well, but I have a problem which I think isn't solveable - I think the php execution time is set at around 30 seconds, which often times out when it's backing up a table, and will only ever reach postindex before it ends, never carrying out a full backup - is there any way around this? I really would like this as it's damn handy to have daily backups!!!

Plus as I've just discovered, it leaves the forum offline!

The script timeout on this is 3600 (1 hour). You can set the close forum option to 0 if you don't want it to close your forum during backups. It won't open the forum again until it completes ok.

[dbarry]

Great Hack, thanks!
FWIW, the DIR thing made me go DOH too. So I opted to take the junior path and hard-code the backup directory:"
$backup['DUMP_PATH'] = '/home/electr/www/backups/'; // Path ( With trailing '/' )

Works great, less filling!

[steadicamop]

Originally Posted by Paul M

The script timeout on this is 3600 (1 hour). You can set the close forum option to 0 if you don't want it to close your forum during backups. It won't open the forum again until it completes ok.

Ok, that's not a problem but it's not doing a full backup - only gets to around half way through postindex before ending, and it did leave my forum closed after a failed partial backup.....

[shuichi_akai]

How can I restore my backups?

[Pagandream]

nice hank, thank you!

[shuichi_akai]

I think the backup needs to be gziped before will be better ;-)

[Snake]

I have a question. Does this mod backups up the database the way that phpMyAdmin does?

[aciurczak]

I've been waiting for this since 3.0. Thanks for porting it Paul, you rock!

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by steadicamop

Ok, that's not a problem but it's not doing a full backup - only gets to around half way through postindex before ending, and it did leave my forum closed after a failed partial backup.....

You can change the timeout if you want (in cronbackup.php) - but tbh, if you have such a large postindex file then I would consider switching to using the vb fulltext search method and clear the postindex table out.

Originally Posted by Snake

I have a question. Does this mod backups up the database the way that phpMyAdmin does?

No idea, afaik phpmyadmin has many different ways it can backup.

Originally Posted by shuichi_akai

I think the backup needs to be gziped before will be better ;-)

Sorry, not going to happen with this, you can always manually zip them up yourself.