website back-ups

[shiato storm]

Right, worst things happen at the worst times...my site has gone down. think there's an error with the database server, that or its been hacked and bits torn out. arse.
so what I'm wondering is whether theres any way of setting up a scheduled task to make a back up of the site - or specifically the database - so should anything go wrong I can simply replace the duff one with the latest working back-up. ideally what I have in mind is a scheduled task that sits on the server and each evening it makes a back-up and then emails it to me and puts a copy in a root folder on the server too... is that possible to do to prevent such losses?

[ikonia]

dead easy, I assume your using a standard apache layout and mysql database ? (judging from your comments only)

[shiato storm]

yes I think so, at least I've not added anything fancy myself...its up to date I know that, its with qiq who are pretty good at that side of things.

[ikonia]

I'll mail you a script, do you have access to cron ?

[shiato storm]

erm... whats that?...

[moogle]

erm... whats that?...

automated jobs. i think its only available for linux servers. ie you setup a cronjob to run the backup script for you regularly.

[directhex]

cron is the daemon on *nix systems which runs scheduled jobs. if you have shell access to your host, try typing "crontab -e", which should fire up an editor with a default cron config file in it

[DougMcDonald]

I expect he's more likely to have some control panel gui that direct shell access (depending on whether it's your server or not i suppose)

On cPanel, there are 'advanced tools' > 'cron jobs', you will need to have a word with someone who has some *nix knowledge in terms of the script you need to run though.