| SYSTEM INFORMATION | |
|---|---|
| OS type and version | Ubuntu 22.04.3 |
| Webmin version | 2.102 |
I am taking over a webmin server that I have no documentation for. I want to upgrade some things on it but first I would like to make sure there is a complete backup. What’s the strategy for the backups. I have seen items listing backups but they appear fragmented and I wanted to make sure I understood how to make take a complete backup and what the strategy was. Can someone help me fill in the blanks? Thanks very much.
Webmin has modules to configure and manage a few backup tools. Webmin, by itself, is not a backup tool, nor is it a disaster recovery tool.
For a full system backup, you probably want to look at Filesystem Backup, which uses tar to backup the filesystems you specify.
Of course, if you have a backup tool you like and have experience with, there is nothing about Webmin being on a system that mandates you only use what Webmin has modules for. Webmin is just a management GUI, you still have an Ubuntu 22.04 system that works in exactly the same way it would without Webmin installed.
Ok so basically I need to have an overall server backup (File Backup) and I can always restore from that backup if needed? Thanks very much for the clarification.
Whatever filesystem(s) you backup using the Filesystem Backup module you can restore if needed, assuming you know how to restore it. Backups are only as good as your experience recovering from them.
As I mentioned, that is not a disaster recovery a tool. You can’t take a tarball all by itself and put it on a disk and call your system restored (it doesn’t address the boot partition or OS installation in a form that is bootable). But, all the files that are in those backups can be recovered.
It is common in web hosting to have a Golden Image of your OS, which has all the packages and such you normally deploy, maybe it already has Virtualmin installed with your default configuration, and then you only need to backup you Virtualmin domains and configuration. If not using Virtualmin, you would also want to backup /etc (for config files), /home (for user data), and /var/lib (for databases, etc.).