The backup file will be created on your home root directory. It will be a tar.gz file. This file can then be FTPed off your server to a local drive or CD (or both!) for safe keeping. I recommended doing this weekly at the LEAST.

You will have noticed during this process something stating the following (or something similar):

Full Backups allow you to save a complete, compressed copy of all of your site data either to your home directory locally or remotely to an FTP server. Full backups CANNOT be restored by CPanel automatically. Only your server administrator can restore a full backup automatically.

If you want to be able to use CPanel to restore your backup files, you must use the separate HOME, SQL, ALIASES and FILTERS backup features, and then you can restore them.

While this is a true statement keep in mind the following:

• The full backup contains A LOT of information. It contains MORE than you NEED but ALL that you WANT.
• Don’t worry! While this file cannot be restored automatically via cPanel, the correct pieces can be extracted and restored manually. It is just one huge zip file. Know that every file has been backedup as well as SQL statements generated for recreating and restoring databases.
• You should also do a HOME, SQL, ALIASES and FILTERS backup and keep the files made separate to the web server.

What you can do is automate this a little. Set up a cron job using the following example:

date=`date -I` ; tar -zcf yourbackup_$date.tar.gz ./public_html

This will backup everything in your Public_html directory - the most frequently altered and accessed part of your web system. It will create a file that looks likes yourbackup_2007-09-23.tar.gz in the home directory, the directory above public_html. You can of course choose any directory to backup. All you need to do is edit the line above. Next set this to run as a cron at a frequency compatable with your web modification/addition schedule and you have a handlable file to FTP to another secure location regularly as a safeguard. There are scripts that can automatically send a copy of the file to you by email, but it depends on the size of the file generated as to whether this in reality is feasable. If you have a remote server for yor web site and a home computer that you don't leave running constantly then a manual FTP of the automated backup file each week is a small price to pay for this insurance. If you are up-loading web pages it takes little extra effort to download the already made backup file through FTP. After all it's already made for you!

After a while you will end up with a number of old and probably useless files in yor home directory. To keep this under control use the following example:

find yourbackup* -mtime +30 -exec rm -r {} \;

This command restores the file 'test.backup.tar.gz' into the directory '/home/test/'.

• z   compress
• x   extract files
• v   verbose
• p   replace permissions with those in the backup-file
• f   the following argument is the filename

Please beware when executing this command! Any existing file that also exist in the archive will be overwritten.

Instead of using the x for extracting, you could also use t to check the archive (get a complete list of the files that are in the archive). If you're not sure wether a file exists in the backup this is easily done with:

tar -ztvpf yourbackup.tar.gz | grep "checkforthisfile"

 Above all else - BACKUP!

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