You can use crontab to automatically back up your website on to another domain.
To do this your host must allow you:
- crontab access
- mysqldump access
- tar access
- gzip access
- ncftpput access
You will probably need to ask them the path to mysqldump, tar and ncftpput.
The following crontab sends a daily copy of your MySQL database to a remote domain. It also takes a weekly backup of your complete website and transfers it to the remote domain.
MAILTO="mail@mydomain.com"
0 0 * * * /usr/local/psa/mysql/bin/mysqldump --opt -u db_user -pdb_pwd db_name | gzip | /usr/local/bin/ncftpput -u ftp_user -p ftp_pwd -c ftp.otherdomain.com target_path
0 0 * * 1 tar cvfz - local_path | /usr/local/bin/ncftpput -u ftp_user -p ftp_pwd -c ftp.otherdomain.net target_path/target_file.tar
- mail@mydomain.com = email to send error messages to
- db_user = username to login to your MySQL database
- db_pwd = password for db_user
- db_name = MySQL database name
- ftp_user = FTP username to sign into ftp.otherdomain.com
- ftp_pwd = password for ftp_user
- ftp.otherdomain.com = domain to send backup files to
- target_path = target directory to place database backup in
- local_path = path to the top level directory of your website that you want to backup (any subdirectories will be recursively backed up)
- target_path/target_file.tar = filename of backup of all files on your domain
Include a blank line at the end of your crontab file otherwise it will not work. The MAILTO line is also a good idea as any problems will automatically be emailed to you. Make sure you replace the placeholders in the above example!
I'm not going to explain the 0 0 * * * bit as there are plenty of articles kicking around that cover it better than I could. This is a good example
Good luck!
