How to facilitate automated backups

There are a number of plugins to automatically back up your WordPress files and database.

If you wish to do this via CLI, here's how:

First, create an S3 bucket to store your backups. (It's important that this bucket is not the one you're using to serve your web content.) For example, create a bucket named rob-test-surestack-backup (make sure to change this value) throughout the rest of the article.

Second, grant your EC2 instance access to this bucket.

• In the AWS console, select your EC2 instance

• In the EC2 details, click on IAM role

• On the right, click Add inline policy

• Select the JSON tab

• Paste in the following (remember to change the S3 bucket name):

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:PutObject",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::rob-test-surestack-backup/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

This gives your EC2 instance the permission to write to the backup S3 bucket. The key here is that you are restricting the permission to s3:PutObject, so server does not have the ability to delete nor snoop around your backup S3 bucket.

Third, create the following script:

/home/ec2-user/backup.sh

Make it executable:

chmod +x /home/ec2-user/backup.sh

And paste in the following contents:

<span class="ch">#!/bin/bash</span>

<span class="k">if</span> <span class="o">[[</span> <span class="s2">"</span><span class="nv">$1</span><span class="s2">"</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="s2">""</span> <span class="o">]]</span> <span class="o">||</span> <span class="o">[[</span> <span class="sb">`</span>whoami<span class="sb">`</span> !<span class="o">=</span> <span class="s2">"root"</span> <span class="o">]]</span><span class="p">;</span> <span class="k">then</span>
    <span class="nb">echo</span> <span class="s2">"Usage: sudo </span><span class="nv">$0</span><span class="s2"> rob-test-surestack-backup"</span>
    <span class="nb">exit</span> <span class="m">1</span>
<span class="k">fi</span>

<span class="c1"># usage: ./backup.sh rob-test-surestack-backup</span>
<span class="nv">BUCKET</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="nv">$1</span>
<span class="c1"># takes the docroot as the second parameter, or defaults to /var/www/html/wordpress</span>
<span class="nv">DOCROOT</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="si">${</span><span class="nv">2</span><span class="k">:-</span><span class="p">/var/www/html/wordpress</span><span class="si">}</span>

<span class="c1">#</span>
<span class="c1"># back up WordPress files</span>
<span class="c1">#</span>

<span class="c1"># back up the entire html folder, because some folks move the wp-config file to the parent folder</span>
<span class="nb">cd</span> /var/www
<span class="c1"># create a zipped tar archive named html-yyyy-mm-dd.tar.gz</span>
tar czvpf html-<span class="k">$(</span>date +%Y-%m-%d<span class="k">)</span>.tar.gz html
<span class="c1"># use the AWS CLI to copy this file to the S3 bucket</span>
aws s3 cp html-????-??-??.tar.gz s3://<span class="nv">$BUCKET</span>/
<span class="c1"># clean up the file</span>
rm -f html-????-??-??.tar.gz

<span class="c1">#</span>
<span class="c1"># back up database</span>
<span class="c1">#</span>

<span class="c1"># do this in a directory that is outside of the docroot</span>
<span class="nb">cd</span> /var/www
<span class="c1"># use the WP CLI to export the database</span>
<span class="c1"># point the path to the docroot, since we're doing this from outside the docroot</span>
<span class="c1"># allow-root lets you run this command as root</span>
<span class="c1"># the hyphen (-) sends the database backup contents to standard-out</span>
<span class="c1"># the standard-out gets piped into gzip</span>
<span class="c1"># and the gzip contents are dumped into a file db-yyyy-mm-dd.gz</span>
wp db <span class="nb">export</span> --path<span class="o">=</span><span class="nv">$DOCROOT</span> - --allow-root <span class="p">|</span> gzip &gt; db-<span class="k">$(</span>date +%Y-%m-%d<span class="k">)</span>.gz
<span class="c1"># copy the file to S3</span>
aws s3 cp db-????-??-??.gz s3://<span class="nv">$BUCKET</span>/
<span class="c1"># clean up the file</span>
rm -f db-????-??-??.tar.gz

Run the script with this command:

cd /home/ec2-user/
sudo ./backup.sh rob-test-surestack-backup

To run this weekly, edit the root user's crontab:

sudo su
crontab -e

And add in the following entry:

* * */7 * * /home/ec2-user/backup.sh rob-test-surestack-backup >/dev/null 2>&1

(Again, remember to change the S3 bucket destination.)