New default lists of System Backup

NOTE: This list will not back up all the required files in a FreeBSD installation. It may not back up all the required files in any linux distribution though it's been tested by us using CentOS.

EDIT 01/16/06:
I've made some changes to the list. Please see the new list pasted in below.

Additions are in bold; deletions are marked DELETE in bold.

John of DirectAdmin has placed my list of files to backup in the System Backup system. All new installs beginning now will include the new list.

You can always reinstall sysbk, if you wish, from:

http://files.directadmin.com/services/sysbk.tar.gz

or just copy the following into your System Backup configuration. Note that we do not guarantee that these are enough of the files; only that we back up these files using the built in admin directory backup function:

All user directories from /home

Backup directories:
/etc/mail
/etc/virtual
/home/admin
/usr/lib/apache
/usr/local
/usr/local/directadmin/data/admin
/usr/local/frontpage
/usr/share/ssl
[/b]/var/lib/mysql[/b]
/var/log
/var/mail
/var/named
/var/spool/cron
/var/spool/mail
/var/spool/virtual
/var/www

Backup files:

/etc/exim.crt DELETE
/etc/exim.cert
/etc/exim.conf
/etc/exim.key
/etc/exim.pl
/etc/group
/etc/gshadow
/etc/hosts
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
/etc/httpd/conf/ips.conf
/etc/named.conf
/etc/passwd
/etc/proftpd.conf
/etc/proftpd.passwd
/etc/proftpd.vhosts.conf
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/shadow
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
/etc/system_filter.exim
/usr/local/directadmin/conf/mysql.conf

Jeff

my entire /etc is 77meg so I would assume adding /etc to custom dirs is much safer option. also I would think /usr/local would catch the last of the custom.files.

My entire /etc folder gzipped has never been bigger than 5 megabyte. Should be no problem at all.

My list includes the needed files from both /etc and from /usr/local.

Of course you can copy and restore anything you want.

And maybe break something in the process.

Maybe not. We don't copy what doesn't need to be copied, so I don't know. If you break something by copying over all of /etc/ or of /usr/local you'll probably have to restore the OS to fix it.

Jeff

Well if restoring a system then I would never just mass copy /etc but since the feature is backup only I dont see any harm in just backing up entire dir tree's. Sicne the restore has to be done manually anyway.

That's what we did the first few times.

Then we figured out only certain files were being restored.

Go for it but be careful what you restore .

Because I'm conservative I've even been able to restore across OS distributions. I don't think I'd risk writing a restore script to do that, though .

Jeff

You confused me now

When you manually restoring which will be file by file in /etc it will only restore what you tell it to.

You cant really overdo a backup, it is much better to backup too many files instead of not enough which is the case when you specified /usr/local as a lot of stuff that wont need backing up will be backed up.

your example would also not backup named.conf on freebsd systems, since named.conf is not located at /etc/named.conf it is located at /etc/namedb/named.conf but it would be backed up with a /etc backup

Thanks for the warning about BSD systems; I've edited my post. As I've said several times, anyone can backup anything they want. I posted what I backup. You can certainly post what you backup.

You're certainly willing to discuss your issues with John and Mark as well; my suggestion to them would be that sysbk's included files and directories be system specific to avoid problems.

Jeff

Hi,

If a server die 100% with this files could restore all the DA (with users, databases, mails...) and will work all?

Any restore guide or how to from sysbk DA ? (or expirience)

Of course i have backups of all boxes with this sysbk but i never needed restore all the system from one server to new server (only some users or databases) . By this i have dudes of will what happend if some day one machine say "bye bye"

--------

Other think :
"Server-to-Server Account Transfers. We are developing a comprehensive account transfer utility that allows server Admins to effortlessly transfer User/Reseller accounts (and their content) to a different DirectAdmin server."

Any ETA of this? would be great, its easy now move users between server but no resellers .

Thanks

I have restored systems with both sysbk and reseller level backups.

Neither is as easy as I'd like, but both are doable, for me. And for sysbk, using my list.

But I cannot guarantee your experience.

Jeff

What about /usr/local/frontpage ?

Restore of Users

When the restore of the users happens will the permissions be valid for that user. Thinking that the mail will fail if permissions are incorrect.

Jon

Speaking from my own experience, two weeks ago I had a server crash and burn. Thankfully, after setting up a new server and installing DA I was able to use the remote backups that I had been running to restore all my users and resellers. I had no problems with permissions or frontpage. Once I performed the restore on the server (from the Reseller Accounts), I was able to login to any account that I tried and all sites came up quickly. Email also worked with no problem.

rocketcity said:

Speaking from my own experience, two weeks ago I had a server crash and burn. Thankfully, after setting up a new server and installing DA I was able to use the remote backups that I had been running to restore all my users and resellers. I had no problems with permissions or frontpage. Once I performed the restore on the server (from the Reseller Accounts), I was able to login to any account that I tried and all sites came up quickly. Email also worked with no problem.

Click to expand...

Are you referring to the reseller level in the control panel?

I don't have any resellers on the system other than admin who is myself. How would a restore work with that setup?

Jon

Jon,

Are you referring to the reseller level in the control panel?

Click to expand...

Yes, As the Admin you also have accesss to your own "Reseller Level". There you have access to "Manage User Backups" I set up my backups to run via a cron every night to a remote server. Then if something happens like it did two weeks ago, after rebuilding a server and reinstalling DA, I can go back into the "Reseller Level" / "Manage User Backups" and use the restore option and enter the correct info for IP Address, User ID and PW. Click submit and wait for DA to perform the restore.

I don't have any resellers on the system other than admin who is myself. How would a restore work with that setup?

Click to expand...

I have Reseller accounts on my server. I setup my Resellers with remote backups (just in case) so that we can restore their accounts also if something unforseen were to happen as it has in the past. We restore their accounts the same way after we set them back up as resellers on the server.

Interesting. The option to restore reseller backups is only available for resellers, and as there none I expect that there would have to be alot of manual restoration to recreate all the users on the server again. [sigh]

Jon

You (as the Admin) are also considered a "Reseller" and a "User". Provided you have setup "plans" and create new customers with those plans through the "Reseller Level" page, You can backup those user accounts and restore them as needed.

Slightly confused as to why I would do that I have checked in the full system backup - Add user home directories to directory list below. Isn't everything covered in that like packages?

Jon

Jon,

It's true that you can backup user files from "Admin / System Backup" But take a closer look. There is no place under "System Backup" to do a restore. Also, if you use these files to do your backup, you will need to do it manually with "sysbk" (That has been discussed in some other post in the forum). You can do your backup's any way you want, but (for me) it is much easier to use the "Reseller Level" / "Manage User Backups" option to backup and "Restore" your user accounts.

We're working on a system backup/restore. We will offer it as a commercial product.

In the meantime I'm using reseller backups as well.

First we build each reseller on the new server.

Then we backup the reseller on the old server and restore it on the new server.

It's worked for us.

However, when we backed up an admin reseller on one server and restored it to a <resellername> on a different server, everything restored except the actual contents of the public & private html directories. They were in the backups, but didn't restore; we had to do it manually.

I don't know if that's repeatable or not.

Jeff