best practices for config changes and backups?

[danix]

I'm at the stage where I'm starting to become dangerous :), so before I start messing up my site, I thought I'd take a snapshot of it. Also, I've seen the suggestion of using a staging server before, and I think it's a good one.

 

As far as I know, the process for replicating a server is this:

- back up entire OSC tree (using tar/gzip/etc)

- export a complete dump from mysql for your osc database using myphpadmin

 

OK, I just tried moving this from my (eventual) production server to a staging server at home, and hit some glitches:

1) The same user in mysql on my home box did not exist so I had to create it.

2) The .htaccess files I was using don't work because the apache password file didn't come over (stored elsewhere on the system).

3) My home server uses port 88, production is port 80.

4) This is the biggie - most of the site is hardcoded to the production URL, so all it ended up doing was opening the real site. I tried editing in catalog/admin/includes/configure.php but most of the site is stil coming from the real server.

 

 

So.... what I'm asking is, is there a simple way (shell script would be perfect) to automate the process of replicating an OSC installation, assuming that the sql and .htaccess users and other small issues are taken care of in advance?

 

Thanks.

[Guest]

http://internetmaster.com/installtutorial/index.htm

 

install this on your local system, then perform a backup on your server database from admin tools.

 

ftp the files from your server to your local system into the 'web' folder you create during the install. using mysql connector or phpmyadmin, you can create a database the same as you use on your site (identical name, etc), the only thing you have to do is change the different locations in the configure.php files for the paths, and everything will work as planned . . .

[danix]

The link you posted is for Windows. I'm looking for a strict unix solution.

Basically, I'd like to automate two processes:

 

1) Nightly, take a complete db dump and replicate it to staging for backup.

2) When content changes, take content and the current production database and push to staging.

 

I'll have to play with mysqldump, this shouldnt be that hard.

[danix]

I've since written a basic shell script to take a tarball of my site, and dump the database, timestamping both files. Would there be any point in submitting this as a contri or is this too basic? It's also platform specific to linux/unix.