Hey HN: I need a dead simple automatic way to backup my databases. | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN: I need a dead simple automatic way to backup my databases.

12 pointsdot10 comments

I use a bunch of mysql databases. right now, i manually export them once a day for backup. i want a service that asks me for read-only database credentials and does daily backups to the cloud automagically. this must exist? no? please build it :-)

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Shell - http://www.kionic.com/tools/dbbackup.sh.txt

Python - http://www.techieinsights.com/2008/12/recursive-mysql-dump-w...

PHP - http://www.sematopia.com/?p=61

For no other reason than the fact that I can, I'm going to build this for you...today. I'll post the link when I'm done.

3:30 meeting, drive home, maybe get some more hacking in. I need about 4 more hours and it'll be finished. OP's profile doesn't have a email or link so I hope he checks back tomorrow. :)

wow, awesome! :)

my email is iphonedot@gmail.com

I hope you realize the implications of handing over your databases to a third party.

Definitely something to consider. It won't be right for everyone. Here's the assurances I can give:

1) All database/server/cloud credentials will be encrypted, although not a one-way hash. They will be decryptable using a key not stored in the database or on the database server.

2) The backup will reside in the user's S3 account, not ours.

I just got home and only have a little time yet tonight to hack on this, but I expect to have a very functional beta by tomorrow afternoon.

Well, the "read-only" part would be your responsibility. You'd also need to give your "cloud" credentials, which would have to be write credentials, of course.

Maybe what you want exists as a service, I imagine you can find it if you google a bit more. However, what do you plan to do when a DB fails? Do you expect the recovery process to be automatic, or are you willing to restore manually?

automysqlbackup.sh (Google it). That gets you from the database to a file. After you've got the file, backing up to "the cloud" should be pretty trivial.

why not do mysqlbackup + gzip + s3sync? this can't be hard

or + tarsnap

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