backup

I accidentally hosed a post last night. I was trying to delete an attachment to a post but instead deleted the entire post. Luckily I have nightly backups, so restore was quick and easy. It was the first time in a LONG time that I've had to restore the database, but I am extremely relieved that my backup system is working perfectly. I also rsync the backups to my home computer they are stored in two different places.,

My backup solution used to be flexbackup. In fact I am still using it while I evaluate rsnapshot. I recently had bought 2 320G drives and used them in a RAID1 configuration. These eventually appeared to fail (they have since been "repaired" by using Seagate's SeaTools software; apparently RAID arrays don't like bad blocks too much) and I reverted back to the old 120G drive that I was using before I went to the RAID1 configuration.

I just read a glowing review of Carbonite online backup service here. Here's the salient points:

"It requires a simple installation, and users choose to back up their entire hard drive or just parts of it. Carbonite then begins the backup process, uploading 2 GB per day over broadband until finished. Files are encrypted, and there is no limit on total storage. If you delete a file, Carbonite keeps it stored for 30 days in case you change your mind. Carbonite monitors files that are changed and backs them up right away.

And if you have a problem and need to get the data downloaded to a reformatted hard drive or new computer, Carbonite will download at up to 15GB per day over broadband until your system is restored."

I just discovered a very useful bash script tonight, AutoMySQLBackup. It is a nice and easy way to backup your mysql databases daily, weekly, and monthly. It was very easy to set up and works great. A great suggestion to prevent having to put the username and password for a database user with read/write access in the script is to do the following:

mysql -u root -p -e "GRANT SELECT, LOCK TABLES ON *.* TO 'backup'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'backupPW';"

Great, simple little MySQL backup script here at B&T's Tips & Scripts. I just got it set up and so dumps of my database are now being made every night at midnight or whenever I call the script (as I did right now before installed the gsitemap drupal module).