Automatic scheduled backup of website (/var/www and MySQL dump)

Question

I've been trying to set up a scheduled backup for my server but i can't seem to get it working. I need to copy the contents of /var/www into a compressed file (tar?) in a folder in my home directory every 24 hours. I also want to perform a dump of all mysql databases every 24 hours and store it in another folder in my home directory. I want both backups to be named with the current date.

The server is running Ubuntu 12.04.1, i only have access through SSH so no graphical interfaces.

Is this possible to do? I've been looking into the TAR and rsync utility, but i'm not sure how to do it. If anyone can help me out if would be very appreciated.

Answer 1

Write a script that does it and set cron to run it daily by placing it on /etc/cron.daily. Read enter link description here

Your script will need to run run rsync (it has a --archive option) and use the date to generate filename. For the MySQL database you would need to create a dump before. You can write the language in whatever language you like. In Perl it would be something like:

my ($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3,4,5];
my $time = sprintf ("%04d-%02d-%02d", $year+1900, $month+1, $day);    

my @backup_commands = (
  "/usr/bin/rsync --archive --copy-links /var/www /somewhre/$time",
  "/usr/bin/rsync --archive --copy-links /mysqldunmp /somewhere/$time",
);

foreach (@backup_commands) {
  system($_);
  if ($? == -1){
    ## add you favaorite method of reporting here
  }
}

You'll need to adjust the path names, set up the part of creating the MySQL dump and where should problems be logged and the like. But it gives you a structure already.