Backup your whole website+database in zip format, get it via mail!

Last updated: 10 April, 2007



Winner of 'Superior Code Award' for the month (April, 2007) by http://www.planet-source-code.com/!

Who doesn't know how important it is to backup your site/blog often? Again, if you use dynamic sites such as Joomla or a forum (e.g. IPB), there is always a risk to be hacked, no matter how security concern you are!

In my experience, it is not always easy to regularly maintain backups, especially, if you don't have a good internet connection. What if your site prepare backups for you and send it automatically to your inbox (Gmail, perhaps)?

This script do the same:
Backup your whole website/blog by compressing it in zip format

Split the zip files to smaller size so that you can easily get them via mail. (Gmail doesn't allow attachments more than 10 MB, this splitting solves this problem)

Backup your selected database by compressing it in zip format (*NEW*)

Send backup files to you via mail!


Without relying to basic PHP Mail, this script send mail via SMTP (authentication supported), which is much more powerful. In our test run, it could send 250 MB backup file in small 9 MB pieces each to a GMail account!


Credits:
This script is written by Mehdi Hasan (Me ). http://www.omicronlab.com/

Swift SMTP mailer library is taken from http://www.swiftmailer.org/


Download from here: backup.zip

(Installation instructions are included in the zip file.)

A few days ago u told me about another script. is this one better?

EDIT: Oh sorry i dint read the post completely. you made it! wow! Besides, the other script backed up only database but yours does to entire site.

implementing it right now on my site!

by the way, where do i keep the 'backup' folder? should it be in public_html or above it? -- ohh sorry its written in the instructions.


This post has been edited by Nipon: Apr 7 2007, 12:30 PM

Ya! Although the code is not so complex, it was enough time consuming because there is not a single script like this available and I had to test it with different mailing systems and different coding styles.

The final result I think is a good one. We are also using it on OmicronLab server

PS> Don't forget to let me know when you get your first Backup!

Another point, make sure you don't send too much backups to your Gmail inbox. When using with cron jobs, set it up carefully. It can easily take you to your site's bandwidth limit if you have a large site.

I've updated the backup script. Now it can send database backup also (optional)

Now it works perfectly (updated just now). Also tested on Bangla Bhai's server

Great News!

This script has won the Superior Coding Contest Award for the month of April, 2007 from PlanetSourceCode.

Details can be known from here:
Script Page

Great!! Another feather in your cap.

Thanks Nipon

Hi great script working well on my IPB forum,

Can you show me how to include this at beginning of script?

rename .php .bak /home/username/public_html/forums/index.php
rename down index /home/username/public_html/forums/down.php

and once complete change it back (with this?)

rename index down /home/username/public_html/forums/index.php
rename .bak .php /home/username/public_html/forums/index.bak


Obviously i have down.php in both locations and will replace the username part

i was just going to copy and paste the commands in but would like it , if you can help?

many thanks GAry.

p.s can i recommend this script to others IPB users ?

Is there any way to include the ability to omit certain folders from being backed up? I have some folders that contain some pretty large files (100mb+) and do not really need to have them backed up.

Either that or perhaps allow an option to skip files larger than a certain size?

I joined the forum simply to say what a fantastic backup script this is. I looked at many and yours is by far the best. Thank you very much.

Welcome to the Forum. glad that you like it

Hi,
this is a really really great script.
Thanks for your efforts!!!

I have one problem:
The backup ist being created and saved in the tmp folder I defined, bit I don't get any email with the file...

How do I correctly set the smtp settings up (taking an gmail account for the smtp credentials) to get it working?
Or can there be something else I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for your help, best wishes,
oeconom

The problem may be with Gmail SMTP. I recommend to use your own site's SMTP for this purpose. For testing purposes I used Gmail SMTP with this script and Gmail told that my account has been locked at level 4 for abusing.

hmmm.
ok, I also tried that but it doesn't work either.
I don't know what the problem could be, but I don't get it working...

Even you setup everything well, there may be a number of reasons for not working, including how your host configure there servers, whether necessary files are available in Linux server, how large attachment is permitted by your SMTP server. Most of the time you will get some friendly error message. As this script is quite easy to understand try opening a support ticket of your host.

I thought it could have been because of the filsize that's send, but I now tried with some sample files that created a 82kb zip file and it didn't succeed either :-(

Does the mailer script to be set up seperately somehow?

Thanks,
oeconom

Can you send me your configured script files? I cannot promise that I can help, already told you- it depends on a lot of factors. Send me @ - mhasan [at] omicronlab [dot] com

I have been using this script regularly for about one half year and it works perfectly. However I just starting using a 28 megabyte database file and because it is larger than 10M, backup fails. Is there some way to exclude the database file?

Thank you.

All set. The solution was simply to move the large database file one directory above public_html. Thanks again for a great backup script.

Ok, I'm also having trouble getting the emails to send. The program produces the backup zips (I might also add that these seem to automatically have the .zip extension even though I've not added this to the config area) and then it says sending emails... all emails have been sent.

The bit in the middle where it tells you that it's processing such and such a file do not appear at all. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Further to my previous post, I've managed to get the script running - I had set the name of the backup file too long and it caused the script to think there were no files to email.

However, now it's working it's causing a fatal error as follows:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 11268895 bytes) in /home/users/.../backup/lib/Swift/Cache/Memory.php on line 40

Any ideas? The size of my website is around 48MBs and that zips down to about 17MBs.

Thanks.

Hello,

I wish I were one more happy user of this script I've been looking for for days, but I still can't make any zip file, even for a test on the "lib" folder : the page says



I am pretty sure that /tmp is chmod 777 and remains empty but unsure if I have to use a relative path or a real path : I tried both (with <?php echo realpath(''path.php'); ?> but could'nt make any zip at all. Is there a utility that could miss to make the zip file ?

It seems that I can't run this script because passthru() and exec() don't execute. I managed to make a tar.gz archive with system("tar -czvf $zipname $path"); but could not manage to adapt the rest of the script.

What can I do from there ?

Hello!

First off, I would like to say that your script is fantastic! I'm using it to back up my site.

Now, the reason for my message is to 1- report a bug and 2- share an addition I've made.

1) There is a logic error. You have a single '=' where you need a double '==' in the following line (which appears twice at approx lines 115 and 152):

if ($mailserver_need_authentication="yes"){

2) I was receiving an error message saying the server memory limit was exceeded, so I added a command

ini_set('memory_limit', '116M');

to set the memory limit to whatever I please for the duration of the execution of the script. I also added a variable called $phpmem at the top where everything was being initialized so that the memory can be set more easily, so the above line looks like:

ini_set('memory_limit', $phpmem);


Just wanted to share my changes to this fantastic script!

Yes, the script looks ok.. But, I have the same problem as newmorning.
How to make this script works?
Thank you

Maybe it's the problem with your web host if it's true then edit the script to disable zipping and generate uncompressed backup. Hope it will solve the problem. PM me if you wanna know how to disable zipping.

thanks for the script ......... it worked for me alot