Foz

Hi all.

I just had to have surpass reload a full backup for me. This is the second time I have had to ask them to do this for me. It all started when I attempted to restore my database. After attempting to restore it through cpanel my site was hosed. Maybe it was a bad database backup? Thing is this is the second time this has happened with the very same outcome( the two attempts were months apart).

So I am wondering if I am backing up my database correctly? I simply used cpanel, went to backup and backed up a database.gz file. The compressed file is small only about 500k(my site is not very big). I initially tried to restore it by using cpanel -> backup -> browse to the gz file. After doing that I went from a working site to a non working site.

I am running xoops and had just upgraded a blog module. The database upgrade of the blog did not work quite right. All the site worked fine but a few of the blogs were not accessible even though they were in the database. I had just made a database backup prior to upgrading the blogs. When i ran into some minor problems with the upgrade, I figured it was no big deal, I will just upload my database backup I made immediately before the upgrade.

Well that was apparently a mistake. Thats when my site became unusable. I read the forums here and tried the cut and paste method in myphpadmin to restore my database, but that actually made my site more unusable. Many times using this method i came up with errors after hitting go or it just timed out.

I also tried pointing to the backup file in myphpadmin that also did not work. My uncompressed database file is only about 5mb, so I didn't think any of this would be a problem.

Bottom line is I am not confident at all that given another problem that I will be able to correct it without surpass using their backup. I do not want to depend on someone else for restoring my site.

Am I missing something? Is there some trick to backing up/restoring a database? During all of this I also tried to upload my home directory backup and had no luck with that either.

I am new to backing up databases and thought cpanel made it easy to accomplish. I was lulled into a false sense of security. I make backups on a routine basis, but I am frustrated that I had such a hard time trying to restore them myself.

Anyone have any advice for me? I am now afraid to try to restore anything on my site for fear of screwing it all up

BTW am using roadrunner for internet access upload is around 512k

Thanks for your input
Foz
sh81
www.thewoodlandsmonitor.com

David

5 Megs is usually too big for phpmyadmin. I know it says it will take files that big, but what it says and what it wants to do are two different things.

What you are doing is correct though. I would think that your upgraded files are what is screwing it up. You need to backup the files as well as the database. That way when you go back, you are going back to the original state EVERYTHING was in.

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