Bash backup scripts including mysql backup

I run a few database-driven sites and when I developed them I needed a script to back up the uploaded files and database. To make restoring the site easier, I basically just archived the whole site including the database. My back-up strategy was two part:

Part one:

A script on the web-server dumps the database into a text-file, and then combines that with a copy of the website contents and creates a compressed archive. I rename the last archive, if it exists, and delete any older ones. This means I only ever keep 2 back-ups on the live server. This script is controlled by the cron tab.

Part two:

A script on my machine at home, again controlled by the cron tab, executes. This connects to the remote server, and downloads the archive via scp, naming the archive using the current date.

It’s a fairly low-tech solution, but its simple and it works for me. The only tricky bit was setting up passwordless ssh login so the script in part 2 could access the live server. It was a tad involved but I used the instructions here. Also don’t forget to make the script exicutable!

Script one (Sits on the remote server)

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#! /bin/bash
#
#Variables
directory_to_backup="/dir/on/remote/server"
backup_name="/path/and/name/of/archive1.tar"
backup_old="/path/and/name/of/archive2.tar"
db="/path/and/name/of/database/archive.tar"
 
# If old backup exists remove it
if [ -e $backup_name ]
then
    if [ -e $backup_old ]
    then
        rm $backup_old
    fi
    mv $backup_name $backup_old
fi
# dump the DB
mysqldump -u yourDbUsername -pyourDbPassword -h databaseHostName databaseName > $db
 
# create archive
if [ -e dbbackup.sql ]
then
    tar -czvf $backup_name $directory_to_backup $db
else
    tar -czvf $backup_name $directory_to_backup
fi
 
#remove DB backup
rm $db

Script two (sits on backup server)

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#! /bin/bash
filename=`date +%y.%m.%d.tar`
 
scp USERNAME@HOST.COM:/remote/file local/copy/$filename