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.

[rainyleaves]

Very nice!!!
Thanks!!! bairy

[tazB.ca]

Warning: set_time_limit() [function.set-time-limit]: Cannot set time limit in safe mode in /admincp/sitebackup.php on line 125
Backup in progress... Please wait.

[Keyser S?ze]

i have linux rar on my server is it possible to have it auto rar the database?

also can i have it put the file in a place that is not accessable via the web, like root/site/right here the other folder would be public_html/forums/admincp/sitebackup

[bairy]

Originally Posted by tazB.ca

Warning: set_time_limit() [function.set-time-limit]: Cannot set time limit in safe mode in /admincp/sitebackup.php on line 125

Oh dear.
I can't do much about it (all you can do is ask your host to turn safe mode off) but I'll make note to suppress the error message, thanks.

Originally Posted by Keyser S?ze

i have linux rar on my server is it possible to have it auto rar the database?

I don't know how to access it. At some point I think I'm gonna install linux and apache etc., and test some of the different methods. For now though, it's not possible I can do it.

Originally Posted by Keyser S?ze

also can i have it put the file in a place that is not accessable via the web, like root/site/right here the other folder would be public_html/forums/admincp/sitebackup

Backup to where is planned for the next version (no idea when that'll be at this stage - got a lot going on).

[Shazz]

I have this successfully working I think. IF something was to go wrong in the forums, I backed it up currently... How would i restore it?

[da420]

Works great bairy! Thanks!

Doesn't backup CMPS, would be nice, but that's not a big deal.

[vietkieu_cz]

Does it work for vbb 3.5 version?

[bairy]

Shazz, I'll answer here rather than the pm so everyone can see.
There is no automatic restore function, basically you'd just put it all back via ftp.
I should think there is a relatively easy way to get the OS to untar all the files back, dunno if the tar format retains permissions though... one to research.

da420... damn, I didn't think it would to be honest, I need to do some more research and testing and see if I can incorportate that.

vietkieu_cz... I don't honestly know. I'm 95% the answer is yes because there's nothing particularly 3.6 specific in there that I know of, but you'd have to try it out.

[Shazz]

Originally Posted by bairy

Shazz, I'll answer here rather than the pm so everyone can see.
There is no automatic restore function, basically you'd just put it all back via ftp.
I should think there is a relatively easy way to get the OS to untar all the files back, dunno if the tar format retains permissions though... one to research.

da420... damn, I didn't think it would to be honest, I need to do some more research and testing and see if I can incorportate that.

vietkieu_cz... I don't honestly know. I'm 95% the answer is yes because there's nothing particularly 3.6 specific in there that I know of, but you'd have to try it out.

I get that part... Replace all the files... But thats just the .php files and FTP

What about the actual Forums? Like if a thread was permently deleted and you wanted to restore last nights, so you would get that thread back.

[bairy]

That's in the database, which isn't covered by this hack.