Automatic website backup without SSH enabled over FTP
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Last time I backed up my website with rsync and ssh, but on my new host they disabled SSH. Rsync does not work over ftp. I do not want to do incremental backups with delta files like is done with rdiff-backup or duplicity. I need to have an exact mirror of my site. But remember that your sql databases won’t be backed up.
Curlftpfs is the key! In this tutorial I will show you how to backup from one server to a backup location which can be your hard drive, another web host, dropbox folder, Box.net via webdav, etc.
Download curlftpfs, rsync and ncftp:
sudo apt-get install curlftpfs ncftp rsync
make directories to mount your ftp server:
sudo mkdir /media/hydtechblog
sudo mkdir /media/hydtechbackupserver
edit fstab to mount the ftp servers using curlftpfs:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
add the lines and modify them according to your server:
curlftpfs#username:password@hydtechblog.com /media/hydtechblog fuse rw,allow_other,uid=root 0 0
curlftpfs#username:password@hydtechbackupserver /media/hydtechbackupserver fuse rw,allow_other,uid=root 0 0
One thing to remember is that these two will not mount automatically because when the computer restarts, the fstab is done while you are not connected to the network. To fix this we can just add the mount commands in our crontab.
Edit crontab:
sudo crontab -e
enter the following lines and modify accordingly:
00 09 * * * mount /media/hydtechblog
00 09 * * * mount /media/hydtechbackup
01 09 * * * rsync -avz –rsync-path=/usr/bin/rsync /media/hydtechblog/public_html /media/hydtechbackup/public_html
ctrl + o to write and ctrl + x to save
This will tell cron to mount the folders at 9:00 am and start rsync at 9:01 am. You can replace the backup location to another folder on your hard drive or your dropbox or ubuntu one folder. You can also mount box.net with webdav and use this method.
For encrypted incremental backups checkout duplicity, it also works with webdav and ftp.
Popularity: 3% [?]
