Backup VPS

Here are simple steps to backup your VPS.

Backup MySQL database

Create a directory to store the backup files. Then run mysqldump command to backup your database.

mysqldump -u your_mysql_user -pyour_mysql_password your_database_name > /path/to/dump_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d\%H\%M\%S).sql

Or you run it as supersuer and backup all databases in once.

sudo mysqldump --all-databases > /path/to/dump_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d\%H\%M\%S).sql

To automate this, schedule a cron job that will run this command on a daily basis.

crontab -e

Insert the following line to execute the mysqldump command every day at midnight.

0 0 * * * mysqldump -u your_mysql_user -pyour_mysql_password your_database_name > /path/to/dump_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d\%H\%M\%S).sql

Backup files

I use rsync and following bash script to backup my files. I manually execute it from my local machine but could easily be scheduled as a cron job and/or run from a different VPS.

#!/bin/bash

REMOTE_USER="user"
REMOTE_HOST="host"

LOCAL_BACKUP_DIR="/path/to/local/backup/directory"

# Ensure local backup directory exists
mkdir -p $LOCAL_BACKUP_DIR

rsync -avz $REMOTE_USER@$REMOTE_HOST:/path/to/database_backup $LOCAL_BACKUP_DIR/database_backup

# Backup /var/www/ and delete files that no longer exist on remote
rsync -avz --delete $REMOTE_USER@$REMOTE_HOST:/var/www/ $LOCAL_BACKUP_DIR/var_www/

echo "Backup completed."

And there you have it—a simple, yet effective way to backup both your MySQL databases and essential files on your VPS.


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