Like any system admins, we need to ensure that we have good backups. Our systems do not have tape backup devices, and it's easy to rebuild the OS, so we're just backing up our data and config files across the network via rsync tunneled through SSH.

We're also backing up locally to tarballs for easier access, and to have multiple versions of backups.

Create directories to store our backup files, and make sure they're not readable by anyone:

mkdir -p /var/backups /var/backups/etc /var/backups/home /var/backups/web /var/backups/mysql /var/backups/usr_local
chmod -R 700 /var/backups

Create the backup script in /etc/cron.daily/backup-etc:

#!/bin/sh

SRCDIR=/etc
BACKUPDIR=/var/backups/etc
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
BACKUP_FILE=$BACKUPDIR/etc-$DATE.tar.gz

HOSTNAME=`hostname`
MAILTO="craig@boochtek.com"
MAILFROM="$SRCDIR backups <root@boochtek.com>"

OUTPUT=`tar cfz $BACKUP_FILE -P $SRCDIR`

if [ ! -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
 mail -a "From: $MAILFROM" -s "$SRCDIR backup report for $HOSTNAME" $MAILTO <<EOF
$SRCDIR backup progress:

$OUTPUT

EOF
fi

exit 0;

Make the script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup-etc

Run the script to test that it works, and saves a file with the correct name in /var/backups/etc/. Run tar tfz on the resulting backup file to make sure it contains the expected files.

Create the backup script in /etc/cron.daily/backup-home:

#!/bin/sh

SRCDIR=/home
BACKUPDIR=/var/backups/home
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
BACKUP_FILE=$BACKUPDIR/home-$DATE.tar.gz

HOSTNAME=`hostname`
MAILTO="craig@boochtek.com"
MAILFROM="$SRCDIR backups <root@boochtek.com>"

OUTPUT=`tar cfz $BACKUP_FILE -P $SRCDIR`

if [ ! -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
 mail -a "From: $MAILFROM" -s "$SRCDIR backup report for $HOSTNAME" $MAILTO <<EOF
$SRCDIR backup progress:

$OUTPUT

EOF
fi

exit 0;

Make the script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup-home

Run the script to test that it works, and saves a file with the correct name in /var/backups/home/. Run tar tfz on the resulting backup file to make sure it contains the expected files.

Create the backup script in /etc/cron.daily/backup-usr_local:

#!/bin/sh

SRCDIR=/usr/local
BACKUPDIR=/var/backups/usr_local
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
BACKUP_FILE=$BACKUPDIR/usr_local-$DATE.tar.gz

HOSTNAME=`hostname`
MAILTO="craig@boochtek.com"
MAILFROM="$SRCDIR backups <root@boochtek.com>"

OUTPUT=`tar cfz $BACKUP_FILE -P $SRCDIR`

if [ ! -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
 mail -a "From: $MAILFROM" -s "$SRCDIR backup report for $HOSTNAME" $MAILTO <<EOF
$SRCDIR backup progress:

$OUTPUT

EOF
fi

exit 0;

Make the script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup-usr_local

Run the script to test that it works, and saves a file with the correct name in /var/backups/usr_local/. Run tar tfz on the resulting backup file to make sure it contains the expected files.

Create the backup script in /etc/cron.daily/backup-web:

#!/bin/sh

SRCDIR=/var/www
BACKUPDIR=/var/backups/web
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
BACKUP_FILE=$BACKUPDIR/web-$DATE.tar.gz

HOSTNAME=`hostname`
MAILTO="craig@boochtek.com"
MAILFROM="$SRCDIR backups <root@boochtek.com>"

OUTPUT=`tar cfz $BACKUP_FILE -P $SRCDIR`

if [ ! -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
 mail -a "From: $MAILFROM" -s "$SRCDIR backup report for $HOSTNAME" $MAILTO <<EOF
$SRCDIR backup progress:

$OUTPUT

EOF
fi

exit 0;

Make the script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup-web

Run the script to test that it works, and saves a file with the correct name in /var/backups/web/. Run tar tfz on the resulting backup file to make sure it contains the expected files.

Decided not to use mysqlhotcopy, as it does not handle InnoDB databases, which some of our apps may require. So we're using mysqldump. The –add-locks makes loading the resulting dump faster. The –allow-keywords allows fields to have the same name as SQL keywords. The –create-options includes MySQL-specific options on CREATE TABLE statements.

Make sure that there's a [mysqldump] section in /root/.my.cnf which is a copy of the [mysql] section:

[mysqldump]
user = 'root'
password = '$PASSWORD_GOES_HERE'

Create the backup script in /etc/cron.daily/backup-mysql:

#!/bin/sh

BACKUPDIR=/var/backups/mysql
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
BACKUP_FILE=$BACKUPDIR/mysql-$DATE.tar.gz

HOSTNAME=`hostname`
MAILTO="craig@boochtek.com"
MAILFROM="$SRCDIR backups <root@boochtek.com>"

OUTPUT=`mysqldump --all-databases --add-locks --allow-keywords --create-options > $BACKUPDIR/mysql-$DATE.sql && gzip $BACKUPDIR/mysql-$DATE.sql`

if [ ! -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
 mail -a "From: $MAILFROM" -s "MySQL backup report for $HOSTNAME" $MAILTO <<EOF
MySQL backup progress:

$OUTPUT

EOF
fi

exit 0;

Make the script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/backup-mysql

Run the script to test that it works, and saves a file with the correct name in /var/backups/mysql/. Un-zip the resulting backup file to make sure it contains the expected content.

Copy the files in /var/backups off the server to another server.

Take a look at mysqlsnapshot to see if it might work better for MySQL backups. Note that it has not been updated for MySQL 4.x or 5.x, but it's a Perl script, so it might still work.

Consider using bzip2 compression instead of gzip.

TODO: We need to delete tarballs that get old, so we don't keep too many around. Would be nice to keep: 1 backup per day for 1 week (or 2 weeks); 1 backup per week for a year (or 1-6 months); 1 backup per month forever.