A full back up of an OJS or OCS installation should include three components: the OJS
system files; the files/ directory you created on installation; and
the database. There are many ways to make backups of these three components. Depending on
the tools at your disposal you may be able to make backups entirely over the web via an
administrative interface such as CPanel; or you may have to make backups via the command
line. The following section demonstrates one way to back up files via the command
line.
All servers are different, and the backup process in your case may be different than
what follows. If any of this confuses you or for some reason does not work, be sure to
check the documentation that comes with OJS in the docs/ folder, as
well as the support forum and
FAQ. But also be sure to read your service provider and server documentation
as well.
To find your system files, look for the config.inc.php
configuration file; this will be in the directory where you originally installed OJS.
Back up all files in this directory and all subdirectories. Assuming OJS is installed in
/var/www/html/ojs and the backup should be placed in
/root, the following example will compress the OJS system files
to a file in /root/ called
ojs-install.tar.gz:
$cd /var/www/html/ojs$tar czf /root/ojs-install.tar.gz *
You will need to know the database name, username, and password; these can be found
in the database section of your config.inc.php configuration
file:
[database] driver = mysql host = localhost username = pkpuser password = password name = ojs
Back up the database using the mysqldump tool, e.g. if the backup should be placed
in /root/:
$ mysqldump -u pkpuser -p password | gzip -9 > /root/ojs-database.sql.gz
Of course, phpMyAdmin or other tools could be used to back up the database.
To find where the files/ directory is, look at the
files_dir parameter in the config.inc.php
configuration file:
[files] ; Complete path to directory to store uploaded files ; (This directory should not be directly web-accessible) ; Windows users should use forward slashes files_dir = /usr/local/ojs-files
Back up this directory and all of its contents, e.g. if the backup should be placed
in /root/:
$cd /usr/local/ojs-files/$tar czf /root/ojs-files.tar.gz
When these steps have been completed, you will have created three backup files,
which can be found in /root. All three of these are required to
restore a copy of OJS from backup.