Preferred Backup Method

[neonix]

Incremental backup (only backup what has changed. (**No Compression**, not compatible w/ftp backups)


Hi,

I have been using Incremental backup to backup all my accounts to the secondary hard-disk /backup.

I have never used the compressed backup method...and have over 100+ accounts on the server.

1. I would like to switch from Incremental to Compressed during my next backup cycle to dump my 'backup files' to an external storage area. Does switching the option from Incremental to compressed in WHM cause any errors/problems.

2. Will the backup files created during incremental backup in my /backup/cpbackup location be retained properly when I switch.

3. In which folder will the compressed files be backed up /backup/cpbackup or does cpanel create another folder...and

4. Can I continue to toggle between both methods to retain both types of backups or will cpanel restore go nuts if it sees both types of backups in the /backup hardisk...

Can experienced forum-members post/discuss some suggestions on the pros/cons of either backup-method with regards to easy of restoration, problems encountered during restore etc.

Thanks for your guidance.

[chirpy]

It'll play havoc if you switch between the two as the cPanel backup/restore actions don't clean up after themselves well, so you should stick to one method only.

If you're going to switch from incremental to full backups (which I would recommend since it makes your backups much more portable) then I would suggest renaming /backup/cpbackup to something else and allow the full backups to create a new cpbackup directory. This is because both backup types use the same directory structure, i.e. /backup/cpbackup/freq/... and this is why problems can occur. Once you are happy with the full backups, remove the old incremental tree.

[neonix]

Thanks for your sound advice chirpy. I'll rename the directory before switching to full backups. I have some more queries.

1. I remember reading something about high loads during full backups when cpanel compresses the sites...is it true?

2. Are all sites compressed into a huge tarball or are they individually compressed?

3. Incremental backups used to overwrite my existing backup files...Does a full backup overwrite the earlier file or create a new file and does one have to manually remove the older backup files?

4. How can I access files for individual accounts from a full backup. Say, a client requires only the index.htm file to be restored for his account.

Thanks again!

[chirpy]

1. They can be high simply because compression takes CPU and memory performance. On server that isn't already overloaded it isn't usually that much of a problem as long as you schedule the backups at a quiet time

2. Each account is contained within its own tarball

3. Each backup run overwrites the previous tarball. It doesn't tidy up old tarballs of removed accounts, but there's a handy script over on www.cplicensing.net to clean them down periodically

4. If you want to partially restore client data (as opposed to simply restoring the whole account which you'd do through WHM) you'd either extract the file manually from the tarball or take a copy of the tarball and expand it in a temporary directory and then copy over whichever files you want

[neonix]

Thanks chirpy,

This more or less sums up everything I needed to know about cpanel backups. Thank you again for your valuable guidance.

Regards,
Neonix

[neonix]

Hi,

I had to restore some files for a client from /backup. All the files in the user's account in /backup/cpbackup were owned by root and not the user and I had to chown the usr/group permissions for all files after retrieving them.

1. Is there a way to retain the original user/group permissions when files are stoerd in /backup/cpbackup.

2. This is a vague question but ....Is there any harm if files with permission 755 belonging to user:nobody are chowned to user:user.

Thanks.