Hi All,

I am using the Plesk backup script which NightHawk so kindly put together.

This script works very well for backing up sites/mailboxes (config?) but I'd like a safe way to backup my entire drive root (/) to my second hard drive (/home2) so that in the event of a disk failure I can get things backup as soon as a re-image was done of the failed drive.

What do people in the forum recommend?

Thanks for your input.

The problem is, if you have an event that warrants a restore, its usually something that damages system apps. For instance, during a hack, some of your critical files like init, login, etc. may be compromised. If you restore with a 24 hour old or less backup of your entire system, you'll be restoring those corrupted files. Although it seems this would be quicker, it actually may cause you more downtime in the long run.

It's best, in my experience, to backup data and configuration files only, and if you want to backup the patches you apply, or even make an automatic script for them to save yourself time, go for it. But, we can trust the binaries from RS to be known-clean copies, so its best to use those and not restore files we're not sure about IMHO.

Hope this helps. If you need any help with setting up a simple backup script for your config files, let me know.

Hi,

What sort of backup script would be suitable? Any input you have would be helpful.

You advise regarding restores/etc. are very helpful.

Thanks.

Plesk just released the backup tools that are compatible with Plesk 6.x. I recommend you use those. They do shut down Apache/Mail/Etc while they run, and I kinda think this is silly, but other than that, they are great tools. They dump into one backup file that you can FTP away for safe keeping.

Go to http://www.plesk.com/ for more info on those tools. You'll need to create an account with your license key if you haven't done so already. This will let you get addons that match your license.

Hi,

I already have and use the Plesk Backup Tools (PSABU) for 6.02. It backups all the site/mailbox/account info/etc nightly.

I'm looking for a script solution for the rest of the server.

Well, as I said in the last post, its probably not a great idea to back up your binaries, but I definately would back up your /etc/ and /var/named/ directories.

Just start a simple shell script that does this:



Replace /home/backup with the area you want to backup. This is VERY basic, but it gives you an idea of where to start. If you need more specific help, let me know.

I just use dump as in dump/restore and I do incrementals on a regular basis -- this makes sure all the changed files are backed up and I don't have to worry about whether I missed something. See the dump manpage for further information.