This page has some background information on making backups and explains some basic *nix backup and restore procedures.

!! Introduction

Your wiki installation contains some unique data in the following directories:

    local/         Local configuration scripts
    cookbook/      Recipes obtained from the [[(Cookbook:)Cookbook]]
    pub/           Publicly accessible files
    wiki.d/        Wiki pages
    uploads/       Uploaded files (attachments)

A good backup plan will include periodically archiving these directories — or at bare minimum [@local/@] and [@wiki.d/@].  Good practice dictates keeping your backup archives on a separate machine.

!! Simple Backup and Restore (*nix)

When it comes to backup, simpler is better.  Since the pmwiki distribution is very small (about 1/4 megabyte), it's simplest to just archive the distribution files along with the data.

!!! Making a Backup Archive

The following *nix command, executed from the parent directory of your wiki's directory, will put a complete backup archive of your site in your home directory.

-> [@
tar -zcvf  ~/wiki-backup-`date +%Y%m`.tar.gz  wiki/
@]

!!! Restoring the Backup Archive

!!!! Simple Method

Your site can be restored and running in under 30 seconds with

-> [@
tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz
find wiki/uploads/ -type d |xargs chmod 777
find wiki/wiki.d/ -type d |xargs chmod 777
@]

!!!! A Slightly-More-Secure Method

The simple restore commands above will give you world-writable files and directories.  You can avoid world-writable permissions by letting PmWiki create directories with the proper attributes (ownership and permissions) for you.

Start with

-> [@
tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz
rm -rf wiki/wiki.d
rm -rf uploads
chmod 2777 wiki/
@]

Now upload a file in each group that had uploads.  If your site doesn't have uploads, just visit your site once so the wiki.d/ directory will be created.

Finish your installation with

-> [@
chmod 755 wiki/
tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz
@]


!!! Details

The commands on this page assume your site is in a directory called "wiki/".  The test backup was made in December, 2005 so it's named accordingly.

Your site will only have an uploads/ directory if uploads are enabled.

The backup command uses a date stamp (YYYYMM) in the filename.  If you automate the command via cron you'll wind up with monthly snapshots of your site.  You can get a daily snapshot by appending %d to the date command ([@`date +%Y%m%d`@] will get you YYYYMMDD).  Be wary of space limitations if you have a large uploads/ directory.


!! See Also

* A [[http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user/20317| thread]] [gmane.org] on the pmwiki-users mailing list.
* A [[(Cookbook:)BackupPages]] recipe in the cookbook.

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