Hackers, Safety and Back Up

[Crazy8s]

I’ve been on some forums that have been hacked to death and some just ended up shutting down. Others are still going but, lost a great deal of really good dialogue.

I pay someone to use their server (Network Solutions) and was just wandering how safe everything was on my forum. Should I keep everything backed up? If so, what would be the most efficient way to do that?

[David Grove]

Run the vb_backup.sh script (in the vBulletin download) nightly via a cron job, and ftp it to another server or download it to your computer.

[Lynne]

To add to what sockwater suggested... also make sure your files are backed up. Keep a local copy of all your vbulletin files. And, if you are storing your attachments/avatars/profile pics in the file system, you need to make sure those are backed up also (if they are in the database, then just backing up the database will back them up also).

[Jason Buchanan]

I have looked for this file you spoke of sockwater but cannot locate it for the life of me.


*okay I have located it how do you run that?

[David Grove]

You need to upload it to your server and either run it manually from an ssh session or run it automatically by creating a cron job.

[Jason Buchanan]

Thanks for the reply, but please over look my silliness when I ask this. I have looked a several cron jobs and noticed that they all have .php in the file path. Example:

./includes/cron/dailycleanup.php

So if I were to set this up would it be this file path?

./includes/cron/vb_backup.sh

Any help is appreciated. My host doesn't allow SSH or Telnet in shared server accounts.

[David Grove]

The vb_backup.sh script is not meant to be run from vBulletin's scheduled tasks. It is meant to be run from a true cron job on your server. Do you have permission to set up cron jobs? Some shared server hosts allow them.

If you can set up a cron job, here's the command to run:

/your/path/to/vb_backup.sh backup

If you can't set up a cron job, look into this addon, it works well and I've used it before.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=167276

[Lynne]

That one is good, but I actually prefer this one - Automatic Database Back-up

[David Grove]

May I ask why? (Just trying to avoid registering on that site to download it.)

[Lynne]

May I ask why? (Just trying to avoid registering on that site to download it.)

It's just a real simple one to setup. I seem to recall that for Paul's, you need to add three files to your forum and you need to edit one of them as your config. The one I linked to is just one file and you can edit your config in your vboptions.

(It's been a while since I installed that, but I used to use Paul's, which is actually an upgrade of an old one, but then someone linked me to the one I currently use and it was just much simpler to set up.)

[David Grove]

Thanks Lynne.

[Crazy8s]

Thanks guys...

It took me a while but, thanks.

[Jason Buchanan]

Yeah I have tried Pauls, but couldn't get it to work. The one you listed Lynne is for 3.6.0, I am running 3.7 . I don't think it will work.

[Lynne]

Yeah I have tried Pauls, but couldn't get it to work. The one you listed Lynne is for 3.6.0, I am running 3.7 . I don't think it will work.

It's working fine on my two 3.7 boards. If you look at the code, you'll see there is nothing in it that will break a 3.7 board.