The default directory path for websites in Linux Servers is usually./var/www/html/ We use this path for demonstration purposes on how to backup websites by archiving/compressing using tools like tar, gzip and copying to a remote server using SCP (Secure Copy) and/or SSH (Secure Shell).
In this tutorial, we back up WordPress site hosted on Centos 7 VPS Server and copy to remote Ubuntu 16.04 Server using scp and ssh.
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The site’s files are located in the /var/www/html/ directory.
We archive the files to the user’s home directory. There are several ways to go about this.
Option One: Archive and Copy to Remote Server in Two Steps
Create the tar archive file from the site directory
$ tar –czvf demositebackup.tar.gz /var/www/html/*
Check and confirm the backed up files:
$ tar –tf demositebackup.tar.gz
Copy to remote Ubuntu 16.04 Server.
$ scp –i ~/.ssh/id_rsa demositebackup.tar.gz linuxuser@ubuntu16-hostadvice:/backups
In case you don’t have ssh keys configured but can log in via password, use the command below:
$ scp demositebackup.tar.gz linuxuser@ubuntu16-hostadvice:/backups
[Enter the password for the remote user when the prompt appears]
The demositebackup.tar.gz has been copied to directory /backups in the remote ubuntu16 server. Ensure the following before running the command:
- The remote user, in this case, “linuxuser†being logged in via SSH has write permissions to the /backups directory, otherwise it will throw a “Permission denied†error.
- There should be no file in the destination directory with a similar name to the archived website backup file, otherwise the destination file will be automatically overridden.
Option Two: Archive and Copy to Remote Server in One Step
$ tar -czvf - /var/www/html/* | ssh linuxuser@ubuntu16-hostadvice "cd /home/linuxuser/backups ; cat > demositebackup.tar.gz"
Log into the remote server and confirm that the backup file demositebackup.tar.gz has indeed been copied successfully.
In case you need the backup to be copied and extracted at a go, use the command below:
$ tar -czvf - /var/www/html/* | ssh linuxuser@ubuntu16-hostadvice "cd /home/linuxuser/backups ; tar -xzvf -"
You will see folder var created in the remote server’s
/home/linuxuser/
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