How to Backup your Website Automatically with cPanel

Hey, thanks a bunch for posting your backup script… I just dropped it in and it works well (I’m on the same host as you), but couldn’t get the ftp piece to work (pointing to drivehq)…keeps saying connection timed out. My perl skills are a bit rusty, so may try debugging later.. If there is an easy suggestion for debugging, please let me know.. Thanks again for posting!

Perhaps you may want to try using the IP address of your FTP server?

(I meant using the IP address instead of the FQDN)

Hmm, tried the IP as well as a different ftp site altogether, but continue to get a Connection Time Out error. I changed the Debug => 5 on line 78, hoping that would provide more info, but it didn’t.. Strange that yours works at bluehost and mine doesn’t..

Great script, thanks. Worked first time with no problems Would it be easy to add the time (as well as the date) to the file name that is created, we want to run the cronjob a couple of times as day without overwriting the file name? Thanks.

can not extract mysql.gz with cpanel , says not a gzip file ??

@ali: have you tried extracting the content locally to your pc to make sure the archive is not corrupted?

I just loged in ssh and tried on remote machine

gunzip mysql_databases-28-8-2009.sql.gz

gunzip: mysql_databases-28-8-2009.sql.gz: not in gzip format

@ali: What is the size of the file? Is it null?

I solve it now.

in script I choose backup ALL DB..

that should be no so I create a user and assign it to all DB.

that fixed..

I tried to ftp the full bakcup file, form hostmonster to drivehq, but even with time out of 300 it’s still getting time out, what should the problem be..?

Do you have an idea what is the approximate size of your website?

Will this back/restore also work if Innodb is place?

@Tony : if there are some foreign key constraints, you’ll have to add this line manually at the beginning of the SQL dump file :

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

And also add this line at the very end of the same file :

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;

Hope this helps.

[...] of you, nerdy but not geeky folks affected by the outage and looking into auto-backup solutions, here is a step-by-step guide on how to set up cron jobs. Even if you haven’t had a website disappearance experience before, it might be a good idea [...]

I just had a database crash for the first time. Luckily it wasn’t that important and I was able to repair it. But, its sort of like when your hard drive first crashes without a recent backup. You then backup everyday! Thanks, was looking to set this up.

My site was attacked by hackers, and the whole public_html structure was corupted. My JustHost plan has only weekly backup without historys, and I don’t want to pay more. So I’ve found that fantastic article that finely allowed me to configure backups by my own, without any charge from the host provider.
I’m using it to save weekly backups on a defferent folder on host.
Thanks alot!!!

I installed this script and ran it. The cron shows the following errors.

Found = in conditional, should be == at /home/site/public_html/cgi-bin/ftp-backup-script.pl line 96.
tar: Removing leading `/’ from member names
tar: /home/site/dailybackups/site_backup-24-11-2011.tar.gz: file changed as we read it
tar: Removing leading `/’ from member names Cannot login Login incorrect.

Any idea what these error mean exactly?

I’ve got the same error:
tar: Removing leading `/’ from member names
tar: Removing leading `/’ from member names

but it’s work perfectly for me.

This cant be right. There is such an obvious error in the code.

# DELETING FULL SITE BACKUP
if($delete_backup = 1)
{
unlink($full_backup_file);
}

should be

# DELETING FULL SITE BACKUP
if($delete_backup == 1)
{
unlink($full_backup_file);
}

Plus the FTP part doesnt work. I know i have the correct FTP user and password set yet it keeps telling me

tar: Removing leading `/’ from member names Cannot login Login incorrect.