Wiki Backup Procedures

Sorry for posting to the top of this page, but the suggestions down below are terrible ways of backing up a wiki.

One of the best ways is to use rsync, which only transfers the changed wiki files, compresses files during transfer to save bandwidth, works over secure SSL connections, and ships standard on UNIX systems (bsd, linux, mac os x).

use this command:

 rsync -av -e ssh user@remote.domain.com:/path/to/wiki/ localdir/

for more info, type man rsync. You need remote shell access or a remotely running rsync server though.

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Every couple of days, I do a brute-force backup of my wikis. I FTP a new copy of my wiki directory and all its contents down to my home base. The advantage is a vague feeling of security. The disadvantages are:

• For the larger ones like http://allmyfaqs.com the process is time-consuming.
• The process is manual.
• Restoring from such a Win-based backup to a Linux IP involves:
  • Copying everything back up via FTP
  • Resetting all the permissions (I can do that)
  • Resetting all the ownerships (needs intervention from ISP's chief geek)

There must be a better way. Should I just backup the .db files, or the .kp files, or what? -- JerryMuelver

Make a tarball of the directory first, then FTP that. That's far less annoying than FTPing each file separately and maintaining the permissions. (I think tarballs maintain permissions.)

Perfect! I use tar -cvf mywiki.tar ./wiki/page to package up the .db files. Is this all I need to recover from a disaster? -- JerryMuelver

Why not bundle the entire directory pointed to by $DataDir? This will save your users' preferences (amongst other things) too. -- KlausSeistrup

The diff_log is almost a meg all by itself. I'll run a tar for the whole works, just to see what I get. An early experiment tar'd the entire server.... -- JerryMuelver

(Later) Ran it up to 3.3 meg for the tar file, from 0.8 for just the .db files. Not a huge problem with a satellite download, but elbow room could be a problem eventually for the tarring process. -- JerryMuelver

If you are using the GNU version of tar, you can use tar -cvzf mywiki.tar.gz ./wiki to compress while tarring the files. You can also move or remove the diff_log at any time--it is not needed by the wiki. --CliffordAdams

Running the maintainance (action=maintain) will throw out old changes from the log, thus reducing the size of the diff_log. --HaJoGurt

You might want to consider looking at the very good rsync package which provides an rcp like command but performs incremental file transfer (only what has changed is actually copied. Its from the same group that developed samba: http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

My experience: I use an FTP client that can do an incremental download (Anarchie on MacOS?), which pulls down just the changed pages. Very fast. If I want seperate backups I can then duplicate the local copy in my file system (also very fast). -- EricScheid

A very simple procedure for the backup would be something like ..../wiki.pl?action=backup, that would create the tar.gz of the database and return it as a binary file to the HTTP client. Might be restricted to the admin, and also we could include the wiki.pl script in the tar. Or maybe use cpio instead of tar, that would allow to select the files to backup more easily. -- AlainMellan?

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EmailBackupWiki
With this small perl-script you can tar and zip your wiki directories. Afterwards the tar.gz-file is sent by email to a specified mail-address.

Cronjob
You can automate your email-backups with the help of a cron-server, e.g. http://www.webcron.org.

--BernhardZechmann