Server backup and restore

Strategies

Wikis: Both the media folders and mysql databases need regular backup and validation of restore. We can run a backup to a separate disk, which is mounted at /mnt/dump and mapped; with /var/backups mapped to /mnt/dump/var/backups. Thus writing a backup to /var/backups will end up on this disk.

Backup scripts are currently stored at: /var/backupscripts/

We want a combination of rsync for heavily used resources (especially the media folders or wikis, and other media storage) and versioned, 7-zipped backup (to protect against user-error as well as hardware failure). The versioning schema is planned to be 7 daily versions (cyclically overwritten), 5 weekly ones (cyclically overwritten), 12 monthly ones (cyclically overwritten), yearly ones (not overwritten). That is after the first year, one has 7 + 5 + 12 + years = 24 + yearly copies.

Versioned backup should be /etc and /home weekly, and /var (without backup, mysql db and media folders) daily.

Current MySQL backup

The daily backup of all of mysql databases is performed by the script

/var/backupscripts/mysql_bak_manol.sh

which is executed as cron job at 03:12 every night. The backup files is located in

/mnt/dump/var/backups/mysql/

and is named as:

ttYY-MM-DD_DBNAME.sql.7z

In the script there is a variable DBSKIP that contains names of databases to skip, for example:

DBSKIP="information_schema|otherdb1|otherdb2"

Current MediaWiki media folder backup

The daily backup of media wikis is performed by the script

/var/backupscripts/mediawiki_bak_manol.sh

which is executed as cron job at 03:22 every night.

It rsync files from media dirs of wikis to the corresponding subdir in

/mnt/dump/var/backups/wikis/

It also makes tar backup with all LocalSetting* in

/mnt/dump/var/backups/wikis/

. The name of tars is:

ttYY-MM-DD_settings.tar

Remote backup

The daily remote backup of these dirs:

/mnt/dump/var/backups/wikis/ 
/mnt/dump/var/backups/mysql/

is performed by the script

/var/backupscripts/remote_bak_manol.sh

It is executed as cron job at 03:33 every night and make rsync of specified dirs to remote server

k2n.bikam.com

Filling disk with null

cd /mnt/dump/; sudo dd if=/dev/zero bs=2048 of=/mnt/dump/file1