Bitnami Redmine backup strategy

Question

We started using Redmine at work. I know it uses MySQL as the database, and Apache 2 as the web server. How can Redmine be properly backed up so that it can be reloaded quickly when anything goes wrong?

Answer 1

This will do just fine:

mysqldump --single-transaction --user=user_name --password=your_password redmine_database > backup.sql

It will dump the entire contents of the redmine_database to the backup.sql file.

Update:

As far as backing up "apache", as I state in my comment below - you don't need or want to back up your apache installation. If you ever need to recover your system, apache would need to be reinstalled as with any other application. If you are referring to the actual files and directories within your redmine installation, those as well don't need to be backed up except for the files/ directory which contains user uploaded files to redmine. You can backup your entire redmine installation (to be safe) with the following command:

tar czvf redmine_backup.tar.gz /path/too/redmine/installation

Answer 2

Run it as a VM (JumpBox has a quickstartable one, I believe) then periodically pause or shutdown the VM and backup/copy the entire virtual disk.

I know this doesn't help with an existing installation, but it's what I'd recommend to anyone planning backups before they implement. That's not meant to be snide, just helpful to anyone else reading this thread.