A noob with a backup question

[fazexx]

How would I go about setting up a backup job or something that can backup the webroots of websites to a Windows server? FTP is preferred, but if you can suggest another method, I'm all ears. I'd rather not do UNC for security reasons, since I'd have to open that port.

I also have WHM, maybe that's an easier method, if it's included there? This is on a dedicated server, and again, I just need a method to back up the web roots of websites to a Windows server.

I assume this would be a cron job with some sort of scp command?

[Infopro]

Have you taken a peek at your Configure Backup page in WHM? You'll find it under the Backup section of the left menu.

There, you should be able to setup backups to go to an FTP server.

[fazexx]

I don't see anything regarding backing up the home directory for a website. Is this just implied in the backup process?

[Infopro]

Yes, this will backup all user accounts. At bottom of that page you'll see a button to select which users get backed up or not.

[fazexx]

Not seeing where to specify time though, just has days.

[Infopro]

In your WHM, find the option on left menu for "Manage Plugins", there find the one called cronconfig, tick install and keep updated. Once you've done that, at bottom of left menu again (you may want to refresh whole page) find this item: Configure cPanel Cron Times.

There you can change the time on the cronjob that runs cpbackup.

That should do it.

[fazexx]

Well I set it up, and it never ran. I checked the destination server FTP logs, never even had a connection from this server. What should I check? I did everything you mentioned.

[Infopro]

Your backup settings is set to run every night? Your FTP connection settings, are you sure you can connect to the FTP on the windows box with the details provided?

[fazexx]

There's nothing from the cpanel server hitting the backup server, filezilla has nothing from it.

[Infopro]

See if you can connect to that FTP server remotely with a site like this for example Gene6 FTP Server ™ - Online FTP Test to be sure you can connect ok.

[fazexx]

Windows servers and networking are my fortee. It's the cpanel box.

[Infopro]

If your settings are correct, push the backup to run:

/scripts/cpbackup --force

[cPanelDavidL]

If your settings are correct, push the backup to run:

/scripts/cpbackup --force

also check this location on the cPanel machine:

[root@serv]-[/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup]#ls -la
total 1196
drwx------ 2 root root   4096 Sep 12 01:00 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root   4096 Sep 13 07:43 ../
-rw------- 1 root root 122058 Sep  2 01:02 1251871202.log
-rw------- 1 root root 122063 Sep  3 01:05 1251957604.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123386 Sep  5 01:06 1252130404.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123351 Sep  6 01:03 1252216802.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123391 Sep  7 01:05 1252303203.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123386 Sep  8 01:05 1252389605.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123333 Sep  9 01:05 1252476004.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123371 Sep 10 01:05 1252562405.log
-rw------- 1 root root 123406 Sep 12 01:06 1252735204.log
[root@serv]-[/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup]#

These logs should give you more of an idea of what is happening.

[fazexx]

Got it to run... One last question... I'm used to using things like CommVault and Veritas Netbackup, and you can restore from single days' incremental backups. Is this possible with WHM? Say someone overwrote the wrong file, or something was corrupted... and they need a backup from say... two days ago. WHM overwrites the /daily/*.* files, so this doesn't seem possible to me...

[fazexx]

Anything for this?