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.

[AMG021]

1st so say THANKS!!!

[Quarterbore]

This sounds great! I am installing now!

Edit - OK, I have it installed but it looks like this will not do a full site backup or at least mine does not look like it is working.

Edit - I am uninstalling this as she is not working for me... I'll watch the thread but this is to dangerous of a script to haev on a site if it is not going to work...

[DPSR]

WAH, bro it looks like you have just solved my biiiiggg problem but i have only one question:

My uploads folder size is about 2 gb will this script pack it also?? or there is certain limit to which this script work??

Thanks a lot once again

[maxicep]

thanx for hack

[bairy]

Originally Posted by DPSR

My uploads folder size is about 2 gb will this script pack it also?? or there is certain limit to which this script work??

You can exclude that directory, however if you include it the script will keep working until one of three things happen:
1. You run out of disk space and it stops.
2. It times out. php won't time out but the web server (apache, lighttpd) might. I believe apache is set to 300 seconds (5 mins) by default so I hope it's a fast disk in that server.
3. Some other problem such as the host rebooting the server.

[Lionel]

Can it be incremental?

[DPSR]

Originally Posted by bairy

You can exclude that directory, however if you include it the script will keep working until one of three things happen:
1. You run out of disk space and it stops.
2. It times out. php won't time out but the web server (apache, lighttpd) might. I believe apache is set to 300 seconds (5 mins) by default so I hope it's a fast disk in that server.
3. Some other problem such as the host rebooting the server.

I have about 8gigs of free webspace left and i am on shared hosting account... will it work?? i just need to move this folder to another.. rest i can do

[bairy]

Lionel - not as such. You can tick some directories one time then some more directories next time, but it'll overwrite the tar so you need to download it in between.

DPSR - Assuming you can have one single file that kind of size, yes. (Some hosts have a maximum size per single file - I'm not certain if there are filesystem limitations too). Best suggestion would be just try it.

[DPSR]

Originally Posted by bairy

DPSR - Assuming you can have one single file that kind of size, yes. (Some hosts have a maximum size per single file - I'm not certain if there are filesystem limitations too). Best suggestion would be just try it.

Its a folder where i store attachments......... np i will this out