[pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Backups

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:50:42PM +0100, chr at home.se wrote:
> Please have a look:
> 
> 	http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Backup
> 
> It's linked from both DocumentationIndex and Upgrades now.
> 
> Backup is a rather important piece of functionality... 

...as is restore.  I think the Backup page might also need some notes
about how to restore a site from the backup if/when the need arises.

<off-topic style='soapbox'> 
I've always been amused at people who go to great lengths to create
backups, but never actually test the backups or perform a restore.

Along these lines, I have a favorite quotation:  "People tend to
make backups twice -- once when they first get a system, and again
right after the first catastrophic failure.  Neither backup does 
much good."
</off-topic>

> ...maybe important
> enough that some kind of backup script should be part of the pmwiki
> installation? We could for instance imagine that simply doing:
> 
> 	..?action=backup-site
> 
> and entering a password causes a local backup of the site to be made. 

The ability of the webserver account or PHP script to create the backup 
(and have a suitable place to store it) might be a significant barrier 
here.  I guess we'd need to find a PHP library that can reliably create
zip files.

Pm