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Backup Extension Idea - Your Thoughts

jimwjimw
edited May 2007 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I've been thinking about an idea for an extension and I'd like to get your opinions before I proceed.

The idea is for some kind of backup tool. There are 2 things that I can think of that should be backed up periodically: the database and the extensions and themes folders. This is the data that changes all the time. The backup options would be activated via an extension and be added to the list of Settings. The database backup would essentially do an sql dump of the db and possibly email it to you. The extensions/themes backup would zip these folders and email them to you.

I don't know if Mark is building this into the next version of Vanilla, but would be curious if he is.
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Comments

  • PoloPolo
    I like it. Very nice idea. So email it x days in x weeks etc.
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    I like the idea.

    I wonder if it would be possible to make incremental backups: I.E. back up only what had changed since the last backup.
  • strawberriesstrawberries New
    great idea, Jim!!!! One of the variables obviously needs to be how often to backup. For me, once every 1 or even 2 weeks would suffice.
  • StashStash ✭
    edited January 2007
    WallPhone, that would be a great option. Ideally it would be fantastic to be able to get it to, for instance, mail you a full backup every month and an incremental from that each week or day depending on your settings. Any chance of it using BZ2 as well? GZ is just soooooo bad now ;)

    As an alternative to mailing you the actual files, a mail with a link to the files would also be a nice option, as well as the option of it doing things silently, eg, not mailing you.

    Will it have point and click restores? :D
  • argie01argie01 New
    You can use mysqldumper (www.mysqldumper.de) software to backup the database automatically and send the backups via email or ftp.
  • jimwjimw
    @argie01: That looks interesting, but I don't know German. Can you translate?
  • TexTex
    http://www.mysqldumper.de/en/
  • StashStash ✭
    edited January 2007
    LOL :D

    Also...

    MySQLDumper fills a gap …
    Good job they didn't say crack :D
  • jimwjimw
    I have made a lot of progress on this extension. I currently have an sql dump backup option working. I am working on getting it emailed to you if the size of the file is not too large. If it is too large for email, I'll display a message telling you the location of the file and ask you to ftp it.

    I am also working on the extensions and themes folders archiving. I've been working with gzip and zip initially. These options will have to be initiated by the user for now. The chronological triggering of the backup will be in a future version.
  • StashStash ✭
    Is there a way for the admin to configure the "it's too big to email" option? For instance, my work mail can only accept up to 10MB per email, whereas at home I can get up to 50MB (not that I'd ever want a 50MB email...), and a couple of other webmail accounts can only take 2MB.
  • jimwjimw
    I can work on that. What about an email address other than the default admin?
  • StashStash ✭
    edited January 2007
    That would be great. And if you want to go completely over the top, you could set a different limit for each Email address ;) But like I said, that's a bit OTT.

    Perhaps just have an "Admin" and "Mods" list, and in either one you could just put a comma separated list of email addresses into each. That way you can have two separate MB limits and as many people in each one as you like ;) Setting the limit to 0 (zero) would mean it never gets emailed, just linked.
  • ercatliercatli ✭
    I am a total noob in all this, but the corollary of back-up is restoration if the worst happens. When I was using v0.9.2 there was a backup option but I could never get it to work. I tried backing up using phpMyAdmin, and it produced a file, but I couldn't ever get it to restore. I think what you're doing, jimw, is an asnwer to one of my long-standing concerns, but is it possible to include in it the means of checking that the backup file is complete and then doing the restoration? Or is that just silly on my part, and obvious? Thanks.
  • jimwjimw
    The second part to the equation is restore. If your backup is not good, then you are out of luck. As far as I know, the only way to test the backup is to actually restore it somewhere. There are several backup references on the forum as well as a link I referenced for podz's site, who has a wealth of instructions on wp and backup and restore and other very useful things. Perhaps I will include that link as a reference on my settings page.
  • jimwjimw
    I am still working on this. Didn't want you to think I fell off the earth.

    One issue I see is that I need to include a pclzip library with the extension. One library of zip functions is about 120KB while another is 240KB. I won't be able to include these in the extension zip file unless Mark makes an exception. Is anyone else using any other zip libraries?
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    I believe gzip is built in to php... but its not very Windows friendly. You could just use that and point Windows users to a gz2zip utility, or something that can unzip gz.
  • jimwjimw
    I forgot to mention that I did try the gz functions successfully. I guess, for now, I'll use them and recommend you get a utility like 7zip.
  • StashStash ✭
    Yeah, just use GZip and let people install 7zip. Frankly, if they're admining a forum, they can cope with installed 7zip.
  • AlisonMooreSmithAlisonMooreSmith
    Any word on this jimw? This sounds really great?
  • jimwjimw
    I'm sorry. I started on too many extension ideas. I will get back to this one now.
This discussion has been closed.