Debian – Backup and disaster recovery debian lenny on remote server

backupdebianremote

I am new to Linux so I apologize if the questions are stupid.

I have a Debian lenny web server complete with MySQL, dovecot, Postfix Apache, PHP5, etc.

It runs on a server in a datacenter so I have no physical access to the server. If disaster strikes, the datacenter will install a fresh debian lenny with SSH root access, nothing more!

However I can do a "hard" reboot of the server since the data center have a special control panel that can do that.

  • How do I make a full backup?
  • How do I do incremental backups to minimize bandwidth use (I get charged for bandwidth use)?
  • How do I make a disaster recovery procedure so I can get all settings, packages, etc., from the backup?

Best Answer

Given that you have no physical access to the server, nor any apparent means to specify how a restored server will be configured, I would be enlisting the assistance of the hosting company to determine how best to backup your server.

In the likely event that they are of no help, I would:

  • Run dpkg-get-selections >/var/backup/package_list each night, to get the list of packages on the machine
  • Dump MySQL or PgSQL databases
  • Use something like rdiff-backup to make a backup of /etc, /var, /home, and any other locations which are known to have user-modified data on them, to a remote location (excluding /var/spool, /var/tmp, /var/state, and the live location of any databases)
  • Restoration is a matter of copying the package_list back onto the machine, running dpkg-set-selections, apt-get dselect, then copying the backups back into place.
Related Topic