The following script can be used to restore multiple accounts from the backups.

It is assumed that all the backup files are already present in the /home directory in the tar.gz format.

#!/bin/bash

#######################
for i in `ls | grep tar.gz | cut -d- -f2 | cut -d. -f1`
do
echo “Restoring $i….”
/scripts/restorepkg $i
echo “$i restored”
echo “====================”
done
echo “Restoration completed”
#######################

Issue :

After downloading a database backup through cPanel (Download a MySQL database back-up) , the tar file generated is empty!

Solution :

This usually happens when you are logged in to cPanel with the root/reseller password. Log in with the user password and then try to take a back-up. That should work.

In its bid to continue providing uninterrupted quality services to its esteemed clients, InstaCarma installed a brand new genset over the weekend.

The company has been scaling well in the recent past. Foreseeing the potential problems which might arise as a result of this, InstaCarma added a new-age 25KVA brushless AC generator to its power back-up facility. Besides higher capacity, the generator is eco-friendly and produces very little noise. Addition of this diesel genset has increased the total capacity of the facility to 50 KVA.

25KVA brushless AC generator

Issue :

How to go about setting up backups using SSH so that backups of every account are uploaded automatically from server1 to server2 ?

Solution :

1. Make SSH password less (key based) from destination to source.

2. Run a rsync from destination to get files from source.

3. Set it as a cron every night according to the server load.

Error :

Sorry, a group for that username already exists.

Fix :

User account related information is stored in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group files . Check all of them and remove the entries.

You can remove the group by using:

groupdel groupname

And then restore the account.

You can also restore the account forcefully by using :

/scripts/restorepkg –force username

Running out of disk space is a very common issue.  Be it a web-hosting service provider or the end-user.  I wanted to share a few tips that the technical support staff  at InstaCarma use to resolve disk-space issues on a cPanel server. As we all know, there are various partitions on a server which are meant for different purposes. So, the methods used to deal with space issues on these partitions will also vary. Let us see them one by one.

The /USR partition

1. Restart the httpd service. This might free a little space some times.

2. Check for apache logs like error_log, access_log , suexec_log in /usr/local/apache/logs . These can either be cleared off or if you need the logs then you can take a zipped copy and keep it aside.

3. Same can be done for the files in cPanel logs (/usr/local/cpanel/logs)  as well .

4. Domlogs – Get into  the /usr/local/apache/domlogs/ directory. Run the following command :-

# ls -al -SR | head -10        —> It will list 10 files in the decreasing order according to their size

If the domlog file is too large for a domain then it is possible that awstats is not running . Check whether cpanellogd is running on the server  using  pstree . If not, restart it .
Else, it is possible that awstats for only that particular domain is not updating. Get into the directory /usr/local/cpanel/base and check if any file as ‘awstats.domainname.com.conf’ exists.   If yes , delete that file.

Now,  run /scripts/runweblogs for that user.  It will update the awstats and automatically clear the domlogs file thereafter. Do not delete the domlogs file itself.

5. Remove old and unwanted backups of  ‘apache’  that might have been taken long ago. Also, check for any other duplicate folders that can be removed safely.

6. Remove core files, if any . Normally, some core files (like core.1234) might be present in /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot . Check for these and remove them.

—————————————————–

The /HOME partition

1.  Check for unwanted cpmove/tar files for the user accounts in /home and delete them.

2.  Check for any cpmove folders as well in /home

3.  Check the folder ‘cprestore’  in /home for any tar files. Be careful. These should  be deleted only if they are very old,say about 4-5 months.

4. Using find command you can check for unwanted tar files(especially cpmove/backup) in the entire home directory. Check their size. If you think that deleting them will  make considerable difference to the disk space then delete them.

5. Check for core files and delete them.

6.  Search for large accounts and see if they are hosting any prohibited content or violating your company policies. If yes, take appropriate measures as per your policies.

—————————————————–

The /VAR partition

1. Restart the mysql service.

2. Log files in /var/log like exim_mainlog, mailmon.log, messages, mysqld.log, mysql_slow_queries.log  can be deleted after taking backups of the required ones..

Note that there is no point in deleting these log files if the size is very small. Check whether deleting these would make any difference.

If you are deleting them then do re-create the files, or you can use the command ‘echo ” ” > logfile’ to empty the existing files.

3.  Clear Mysql logs like server-name.err or any other  present  in /var/lib/mysql

4. Delete mysql-bin.000* file  in /var/lib/mysql, if present.

5. There might be useless large .sql files   in /var/lib/mysql . Delete them.

6.  Remove unwanted emails from spool. You can use the following code to do that :

exim -bpc
exim -bpru | grep frozen | awk {‘print $3′}|xargs exim -Mrm
exim -bpru | grep “<>” | awk {‘print $3′}|xargs exim -Mrm
exim -bpru | grep “nobody” | awk {‘print $3′}|xargs exim -Mrm
exim -bpru|awk {‘print $3′}|xargs exim -Mrm
exiqgrep -o 86400 -i | xargs exim -Mrm
exim -bpc

7. There might be yum cache files inside the /var/cache folder which can take space. To remove them do:
#  yum clear all
#  yum list all

8. Again, search for any core files ( core dump ) like core.12* etc.

—————————————————–

The /BACKUP partition

1. Remove any tar/cpmove files if they are too old and large.

2. Remove any old  configuration backups ( like apache.bkp) or any log file backup , say 3-4 months old.

3. Check for core files and remove them.

These are some of the general steps that can be followed to deal with space issues on the servers.

Backup is the activity of copying files or databases to a disk or tape so that these may be used to restore the original after a data loss. It is always advised to keep one backup in a different location from the others.

Why do you need a backup ?

Data is one of the most important aspects of our computer systems and the probability of a failure is lower these days due to upcoming technologies. A data loss can occur due to hardware failure, software bugs and natural calamity so being a smart user, one should go for data backup which is cheap, fast and a prevalent way of saving data. And since backups can be stored in
different locations from the original data, it is safe from a any natural calamities.

What is CDP?

Continuous Data Protection or rather a CDP Server is a server software application enabled in servers running Windows and Linux operating systems for disk-based data protection and disaster recovery.The idea behind CDP was to change the approach to backup solution which was a switch from tape-based system to hd-based system that is less complex and less expensive, with the opportunity to handle better backup images.

The disk-based storage protects the disk volume data by syncronising point-in-time snapshots (a read-only copy of the data set frozen at a point in time and allow applications to continue writing to their data. This is mainly performed in high-availability systems where downtime is not acceptable) over the network. Instead of scheduling periodic backups, the system immediately logs every change on the host system.

Now , a point-in-time snapshot of the disk is created by a Linux command line utility Hot Copy (hcp), without interrupting applications on the Linux servers, while the system is running. If any block level changes are made to the device, Hot Copy makes a backup copy of the changed blocks only.

Rsync backups

Rsync over SSH ,which ensures all data transferred has the benefit of being secure, is an ideal method for incremental backup of large number of files. In this process, it copies only the files, preserving file permissions, links and other data, that has been changed since the last backup or sync was made which saves time and bandwidth. This makes restoration of data very onto a
new server very simple.

How to Restore Data?

At a particular point-in-time, the recovery point stored on the CDP server is virtually a disk image and each disk image has the file system format, partition table and volume management data required to rebuild the entire disk. You need to boot the server into a special disaster recovery mode incase of disaster or quick roll-back of Linux/Windows servers. Once its booted into the recovery mode, you can stream a recovery point directly onto your server hard disk from the CDP server over any TCP/IP network.

Advantages of CDP

*  Near-Continuous Backups, providing hundreds of recovery points per day scheduled as little as 5 or 10 minutes apart
* It is Resource-friendly and the processor usage and bandwidth utilization during backups are low.
* It has the ability to visualize, create, and verify backups taken.
* Data is protected as the backups that are being processed are fully encrypted.