I run this blog on a VPS from Tektonics. It’s usually more available to the Internet than the server in the basement.

The only concern is that it’s not my server and backups are important. I had been using Tamba2’s script for backing up on a cron job but forgot that the script only got tables that you told it to. Donncha’s script gets all the tables, but I like getting one file for the data. Also I want to be able to retrieve the file backup without using a password onto the system but make sure that the file can’t be used by other people. For me that means putting it on the web server but encrypting the backup so that only my private key can decrypt the data.

The idea is to

  • Backup all the tables in the WordPress database
  • E-mail the database backup to an e-mail address of my choosing
  • Create a file backup
  • Encrypt the file backup and put it somewhere it can be downloaded
  • Retrieve the backup and store it somewhere else

The GPG file encryption is over the top; I’m practicing for solving a problem at work where scripts and passwords are a huge no-no.

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