backup and restore to CentOS

Hi, I seem to be having all sorts of issues with my CentOS 5 installation (not with virtualmin, but other software) and have been putting up with it for twelve months now. The time has come to wipe the server and reload fresh. However, I have a question about backup and restore first !

  1. Should I be able to simply use the Virtualmin Backup utility (as I have been doing) to backup all my Virtualmin files, configuration, email, email accounts and all to give me a restorable full backup?

  2. Once fully backed up (using 1. above) - should I then be able to install Virtualmin from download and then simply RESTORE everything back to the way it was - like nothing ever happened?

  3. Is the same true if I install CentOS 6 instead of Centos 5 that I have currently?

If the above statements are not true, would you please be so kind as to advise (or point me to an article) that will provide me with a BULLET PROOF backup that WILL restore perfectly without any issues what-so-ever. I absolutely cannot afford to lose my configuration details. I can lose the web sites (as I have a backup of them) , but all the email accounts (username/passwords etc) would not be able to do !

thanks !!

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could someone please reply?

Yes, if you take a full backup (including Virtualmin settings) you should be able to restore that on your new CentOS 6 system with Virtualmin installed.

Note that this only includes changes made within Virtualmin .. settings in other Webmin modules that are outside Virtualmin's scope (like the Squid module, or some global Postfix settings) will not be included.

Hrm, for some reason, no notice was generated when you submitted your issue initially. Sorry for the delay, and we're certainly happy to help you with your backup and restore questions.

Our recommended way of handling a migration like you're describing is here:

http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/migrate

Migrations can occur across distribution versions with no problem -- your accounts, email addresses, DNS, databases, and the like will be preserved.

That will restore all your Virtualmin related settings.

For your question here:

Once fully backed up (using 1. above) - should I then be able to install Virtualmin from download and then simply RESTORE everything back to the way it was - like nothing ever happened?

In regards to Virtualmin, yes! In regards to general system configuration -- if you made changes to a system configuration file... files in /etc that aren't part of Virtualmin -- those are not included as part of a backup and restore. For many people, that's no problem. But if you manually changed some configuration items in /etc, those are not copied over. The issue there is that configuration files often aren't compatible between distribution versions, and Virtualmin doesn't want to risk overwriting a configuration file in /etc with an incompatible one.

What you could do is make a backup of everything in /etc, and if you run into any problems, you have the config files with all your changes in them in case you run into something that can't be migrated.

that will provide me with a BULLET PROOF backup that WILL restore perfectly without any issues what-so-ever.

I'm not sure anyone from any company can promise that :-)

We try hard to develop a system for migrating servers that works well, and our recommended way of doing that is described in the above document.

We test that a lot, and find it to work well.

However, this all being software, something is sure to take longer than expected, or require some tinkering to get it to work right.

So, we'd certainly recommend planning for downtime. We'd also suggest running a test migration on a test server before making changes to a live server. That way, you'd know what to expect.

And backups... have lots and lots of backups :-)

Take a peek at the above migration document when you get a chance, and let us know if you have any questions on that.

thanks Guys !