My server backup solution

  • October 23, 2007
  • Avatar for peter
    Peter
    Upfold

I'd like to share something with you today and that is the backup solution that I use on my web server. My server powers my personal website and a couple of other small sites too.

Actually I lied earlier - what I'm going to share today is only part of my backup solution, which backs up the database and the files in my main website folder and the folders for each of my virtual hosts (the sites on subdomains of my main domain).

So let's dissect my solution quickly.

I have a shell script which performs these backups and it gets run nightly in the early hours of the morning using cron. What the script does is it takes a mysqldump of the database, uses tar to backup the relevant directories.

The backups are stored in /root/Backups, but the script also mirrors them to a secondary drive I also have in my server, so there are always two copies of every backup at any one time. If one drive fails, the backups should still be found on the other, is the theory.

The script also has one final cool feature - it automatically prunes out older backups from both locations, so I don't run out of disk space, but I still have plenty of backups saved in case I need to restore from one older than the most recent.

So that's all very well and good - but you want to see some code right? Well, it's your lucky day.

#!/bin/bash

DATE1=`date | awk '{print $3}'`
DATE2=`date | awk '{print $2}'`
DATE3=`date | awk '{print $6}'`

THEDATE="${DATE1}${DATE2}${DATE3}"

KEEPORIG=10
KEEPSECOND=30

KEEPSQLORIG=30
KEEPSQLSECOND=50

ORIGDIR="/root/Backups"
SECONDDIR="/secondarydir"
APACHEDIR="/var/www/html"
VHOSTSDIR="/var/www/vhosts"

MYSQLUSER=root
MYSQLPASS=pass

cd ${ORIGDIR} # chdir to the right dir
tar -cjvf "./MainApache_${THEDATE}.tar.bz2" ${APACHEDIR} # tar up apache dir
tar -cjvf "./Vhosts_${THEDATE}.tar.bz2" ${VHOSTSDIR} # tar up vhosts dir

mysqldump -u ${MYSQLUSER} -p${MYSQLPASS} -A > "./MySQL_${THEDATE}.sql" # dump db
bzip2 "./MySQL_${THEDATE}.sql" # compress db

cp -v "./MainApache_${THEDATE}.tar.bz2" ${SECONDDIR} # copy
cp -v "./Vhosts_${THEDATE}.tar.bz2" ${SECONDDIR} # copy
cp -v "./MySQL_${THEDATE}.sql.bz2" ${SECONDDIR} # copy

# prune .tar.bz2 in original folder
if [ `ls -1 "${ORIGDIR}" | grep .tar.bz2 | wc -l` -gt $KEEPORIG ]; then
i=1
for each in `ls -1t "${ORIGDIR}" | grep .tar.bz2`; do
if [ $i -gt $KEEPORIG ]; then
echo Removing "${ORIGDIR}/${each}"
rm -fv -- "${ORIGDIR}/${each}"
fi
let "i = i + 1"
done
fi

# prune .tar.bz2 in second folder
if [ `ls -1 ${SECONDDIR} | grep .tar.bz2 | wc -l` -gt $KEEPSECOND ]; then
i=1
for each in `ls -1t "${SECONDDIR}"`; do
if [ $i -gt $KEEPSECOND ]; then
echo Removing "${SECONDDIR}/${each}"
rm -fv -- "${SECONDDIR}/${each}"
fi
let "i = i + 1"
done
fi

# prune db dumps in original folder
if [ `ls -1 "${ORIGDIR}" | grep .sql.bz2 | wc -l` -gt $KEEPSQLORIG ]; then
i=1
for each in `ls -1t "${ORIGDIR}" | grep .sql.bz2`; do
if [ $i -gt $KEEPSQLORIG ]; then
echo Removing "${ORIGDIR}/${each}"
rm -fv -- "${ORIGDIR}/${each}"
fi
let "i = i + 1"
done
fi

# prune db dumps in second folder
if [ `ls -1 "${SECONDDIR}" | grep .sql.bz2 | wc -l` -gt $KEEPSQLSECOND ]; then
i=1
for each in `ls -1t "${SECONDDIR}" | grep .sql.bz2`; do
if [ $i -gt $KEEPSQLSECOND ]; then
echo Removing "${SECONDDIR}/${each}"
rm -fv -- "${SECONDDIR}/${each}"
fi
let "i = i + 1"
done
fi

If you want an easily downloadable version of said script, feel free to grab it here.

Enjoy!

Avatar for peter Peter Upfold

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