'Uploads' directory not backed up

Well, the ‘normal’ WP structure (under Debian) IS to use the /usr/shared/wordpress directory for what has to be protected (out of the web user’s reach) and can stay read-only, while keeping everything else in either the /var/lib/wordpress branch, or in /etc/wordpress, respectively. This way, everything is exactly where it belongs, which is why administrators like me love Debian so much. 🙂

You are right though that it is GIT default behaviour to not follow symlinks. Still I think that you (the Revisr engineers) ought to keep your promise that Revisr really backs up what it claims to back up.

For the technical user, who has a good basic knowledge of Linux, I have a workaround suggestion as follows.

If you can SSH to your server (ie if you have shell access), logon to your server as root. Navigate to the directoy which the ‘uploads’ directory is a child of, like this:

cd /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content

First of all, do a

ls -la

..to verify that ‘uploads’ is really a symlink, rather than a ‘real’ directory (if it’s a real directory, you need not do a thing and please skip the rest).

Next, in order to not interfere with wordpress as it is, create a new subdirectory, such as…

mkdir uploads-mounted

Finally, mount the ‘true’ uploads directory (ie where the uploaded files really are, for me this is /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/) into that new directory you have just created:

mount --bind /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/ uploads-mounted/

Done. From now on, Revisr will take care of everything in the uploads directory, most importantly your wordpress database.

Remember that this is only a cludge, though. The mount command, as handy as it comes in here, has its drawbacks.

Hope this helps some users out, for the time being.

Michael 🙂