UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 7 Development How Do I? DataBase backup and Cron

I wasn't real sure where to post this as it really pertains to maintaining the forums, and I was really thinking this is something that threads should have but it wouldn't be actually intergrated into the forum software, instead an added cron event.

dodbbackup.php is responsible for backing up the data base(s), As I just went through and had to restore my users and posts databases from a backup I'd manually created last week I saw the light in needing a daily backup.

What I'd like to see, and I'm sure a lot of threads admins wouldn't mind having, is a way to invoke dodbbackup.php nightly, have it create a directory under the /backups directory of your choice by date. Ie, /backups/022603, /backups/022703 etc. and still be reconized by threads.

As I see it now, I could create a cron event to call mysqldump and pass the parameters too it, but it would be nice to have it intergrated a bit with threads too!

As much as the next wiz bang mod is looked forward to, the mundane utility that saves your skin someday down the line REALLY is appreciated... Any help??

Any suggestions?

I haven't set this up yet.... but someone recently told me about http://www.phpmybackup.com/

It's a utility that can backup and even FTP the files to another server.

I do want to play with this some time... I just haven't had the chance.

Thanks Josh, I'll check that out.

I would think that since we've already got most of the work in treads alla dodbbackup.php and such, we'd need an external handler, or include some form of timer in threads and have threads do it.

Threads simply uses the system() function to run mysqldump. To do what you want, I think it's easier to just set up a cron table entry to run mysqldump explicitly. That's what I do, except that the cron table entry also runs the mysql commands to check all the tables. It's completely external to threads, so there's no maintenance overhead when doing version upgrades.

I checked out the phpmybackup, and it did work somewhat as advertised, it really took up some overhead, and lasted a while on some of the larger data files.

My question to you would be what command set are you using mysqldump -???? and how are you handling archival issues? Are you just dumping on top of your backup, so in essence you're backed up one day at all times? I was hoping for something that I could backup the database, gz it as that days date and set it aside. then manually months down the road delete old backups as desired.

My cron table entry runs a PHP script.

That script runs mysqldump with the following options: --quick --add-drop-table --add-locks --lock-tables

The --opt option, as suggested by the MySQL manual, includes all of the above options with the addition of --extended-insert (Use the new multiline INSERT syntax, for more compact and faster inserts statements.) The --extended-insert option was intentionally omitted here since it makes it more difficult to view or edit the dump file with a text editor, should that be desired.

I construct the backup file name by concatenating a timestamp to the database name, so that each backup is in a new file.