Title: DIY incremental backups?
Last modified: February 12, 2017

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# DIY incremental backups?

 *  [amca01](https://wordpress.org/support/users/amca01/)
 * (@amca01)
 * [9 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/diy-incremental-backups/)
 * I know there are various backup plugins, but most seem to require payment to 
   access full functionality. On the other hand, I can back up the database with
   mysqldump, and the wordpress files with any number of linux tools (I’m running
   wordpress on a VPS running Ubuntu server 14.04).
 * However, mysqldump doesn’t really do incremental backups – and the “wp-posts”
   table of my database is nearly 7Gb.
 * I’m wondering if anybody can point me in the direction of shell scripts, or linux
   apps, for managing – and maybe even automating – backups. If incremental backups
   can be done as well, that would be a great bonus.
 * I suppose I could always write a few cron scripts…
 * Thanks,
    -A

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/)
 * (@jdembowski)
 * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad
 * [9 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/diy-incremental-backups/#post-8795753)
 * There are some really good backup solutions that work as plugins. I use one that
   has a paid component and my multisite test restore hasn’t ever failed to “cloud”
   storage.
 * _*Makes note to check backup this weekend*_
 * As you’ve stated, mysql doesn’t have the concept of incremental backups (or at
   least, that’s a nut I’ve never cracked myself). If you’re comfortable with cron
   jobs then give WP-CLI a look.
 * [http://wp-cli.org/](http://wp-cli.org/)
 * You _should_ do the mysql backup as that and file backups are almost 100% bulletproof
   but give these commands a read.
 * [http://wp-cli.org/commands/db/](http://wp-cli.org/commands/db/)
    [http://wp-cli.org/commands/export/](http://wp-cli.org/commands/export/)
   [http://wp-cli.org/commands/import/](http://wp-cli.org/commands/import/)
 * For CLI and server buffs, wp-cli is a godsend. I don’t think you’ll ever get 
   incremental working for the DB but incremental file backups using tar is pretty
   straight forward.
 * [https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html)
 * If you store backups in a directory then it’s just a `find` command to process
   files older than a certain days back.
 * [http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/delete-files-older-than-x-days-on-linux/](http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/delete-files-older-than-x-days-on-linux/)
 * In that post it’s talking about deleting old files but you can change the `-exec
   rm {}` to a script too so it’s `-exec /use/local/bin/script.sh {}` instead.
 *  [Pothi Kalimuthu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pothi/)
 * (@pothi)
 * [9 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/diy-incremental-backups/#post-8797495)
 * AFAIK, there is no DIY incremental backup solution for MySQL.
 * Jan mentioned it already and covered other points as well. So, let me go off-
   topic. 🙂
 * Xtrabackup utility can be used to take incremental backups. Know more at [https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.3/backup_scenarios/incremental_backup.html](https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/2.3/backup_scenarios/incremental_backup.html)
 * Warning: **Untested**.
 * If you aren’t already doing the following, I’d strongly recommend…
 * – To use InnoDB (to stop locking the whole table while doing backup)
    – To take
   backup of individual tables. One at a time. wp-cli comes in handy here.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘DIY incremental backups?’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [automatic](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/automatic/)
 * [backups](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/backups/)
 * [incremental](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/incremental/)
 * [linux](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/linux/)

 * In: [Everything else WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/miscellaneous/)
 * 2 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Pothi Kalimuthu](https://wordpress.org/support/users/pothi/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/diy-incremental-backups/#post-8797495)
 * Status: not resolved

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