Organic Programming

A simple way to backup your server.

Backup mysql database:

mysqldump -u $mysqlUser -p$mysqlPassword database > dump.sql

or you can dump all databases to a single sql file

mysqldump -u $mysqlUser -p$mysqlPassword --all-databases > dump.sql

Backup postgresql database:

pg_dumpall -U user > dump.sql

but because this will execute on server there will be no user interaction so for this to work you need to create a .pgpass file in your home directory.
NOTE: make sure it has permission 600 or else it will be ignored.

cat > ~/.pgpass << ^D
host:port:*:user:password
^D
chmod 600 ~/.pgpass

You may need a remote server where to store your backup and you also want to connect without providing a password (a good tutorial can be found here).
NOTE:
a) make sure ~/.ssh exists on remote server and it has permissions 700
b) use “-p port” if ssh is not on the default port

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub "-p port remoteUser@remoteHost"

An easy way to backup your files on a remote server is to use rsync

rsync -e "ssh -p remotePort" -avrp localPath remoteUser@remoteHost:remotePath

Create cron job

cat > /etc/cron.weekly/remote_backup << ^D
#!/bin/sh
######### Start backup script #########

######### End backup script ##########
^D
chmod 700 /etc/cron.weekly/remote_backup

Backup a folder to a tar archive

tar zcvf /archive/etc.tgz /etc/

or backup the entire server

tar -zcvpf /archive/full-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar.gz \
    --directory / --exclude=archive --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=var/spool/squid

Download complete backup script