Database backups
All important data is stored in the database. This includes all servers, users, and other information.
It's important to keep backups of your database to ensure that you can restore your panel if something goes wrong.
How to back up
You can use MySQL dump to back up your database.
This command will create a backup file in the /var/www/controlpanel/ folder.
mysqldump -u root -p controlpanel > /var/www/controlpanel/backup.sql
How to restore
To restore a backup, you need a fresh database. If you already have a database, you can use the following command to drop it.
Warning, this will delete all Controlpanel related data! Make sure your database is backed up before continuing.
mysql -u root -p controlpanel -e "DROP DATABASE controlpanel"
Then you can restore the backup. You can also restore the backup on any other new server.
mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE controlpanel;
CREATE USER 'controlpaneluser'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'USE_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON controlpanel.* TO 'controlpaneluser'@'127.0.0.1';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
mysql -u root -p controlpanel < /var/www/controlpanel/backup.sql
If you have a backup from an older version of ControlPanel, you have to migrate the database to the latest version.
cd /var/www/controlpanel
sudo php artisan migrate --seed --force
How to automatically backup
You can automatically back up your database every day at midnight, for example. First, create a read only user for the database.
mkdir -p /var/www/controlpanel/backups
mysql -u root -p
CREATE USER 'controlpanelbackupuser'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'USE_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD';
GRANT LOCK TABLES, SELECT ON controlpanel.* TO 'controlpanelbackupuser'@'127.0.0.1';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
Then create a cronjob to run the following command at midnight.
Run crontab -e and add the following line:
0 0 * * * mysqldump -u controlpanelbackupuser --password=<USE_YOUR_OWN_PASSWORD> --single-transaction --quick --lock-tables=false controlpanel > /var/www/controlpanel/backups-$(date +\%F).sql
This will create a backup at /var/www/controlpanel/backups-$(date +\%F).sql every day at midnight. Every file will have the date when it was made in the filename, so you can also resolve issues that happened a few days ago.
Appliaction key
The application key is used to encrypt the data in the database, if its lost you will not be able to decrypt the data in the database.
Backup the application key
To backup the appliaction key you need to get it from the .env file
you can get there with this command:
nano /var/www/controlpanel/.env
keep this key safe you will need later!
Restore the application key
After you have reinstalled the panel go back into the .env
nano /var/www/controlpanel/.env
You can then change the new key with the old key!