How to compress and backup server?

[slobizman]

I have a managed dedicated server for my site, but I'm not real knowledgeable when it gets to server/unix/apache things. What I want to do is compress (zip?) up my web site, including my two MySQL databases and download them to my local computer.

Is there a script for doing thing somewhere? Or, examples of the commands I'd issue through shell access I can see anywhere? A good reference for this somewhere?

Thanks!

[Duckula]

Simply tar up the script parts, and use phpmyadmin to export the SQL tables as file. Then use phpmyadmin again in the new machine to import the tables. That's what I do when moving Drupal sites.

[moltar]

There gotta be another way of doing it. I don't believe that server back ups are usually done this way.

I am also interested in the solution.

[Duckula]

Yes; the same operations performed by phpmyadmin can be automated in a script. The GUI is just a more confortable way, to me at least.

I don't do this often, but the idea is using sqldump and sqlrestore. For example:

mysqldump [database name] > [dump file]

and

mysql [database name] < [dump file]

in a shell script, for example.

(I think; I don't do this often, as I said)

<edit>mysqlrestore doesn't exist, sorry</edit>

[slobizman]

I don't even know what tar up files means. I guess it's like a zip for the server, but I've never used it. Do you have a sample command I can see?

[Duckula]

Sorry. Yes, it's like zip.

An example command is, if you want to archive a directory called 'foo/' in the current directory,

tar cjvf foo.tar.bz2 foo/

And to decompress,

tar xjvf foo.tar.bz2

assuming bz2 compression (better, but more CPU expensive).