Some of you may know me for the themes I build but my career went way further than that. I'm a retired Network Engineer who for 33 years worked in just about every area of a computer center that you can thnk of. But I'm not here to talk about me, I'm here to pass along to you the information I gathered while I conducted a test of the Backup_Restore utility that I released just for RavenNuke(tm) that's used to backup and if needed to restore your sql tables and data information.

This week started out just like every other one. I'm an invalid suffering from a variety of medical conditions so I sit in my chair everyday and create things on my computer. I got this crazy idea that I wanted to test the Backup_Restore utility that I had worked on and released a couple of weeks back. So to satisfy my craving I decided to conduct a realtime intrusion/forced entry attack on my root account which has 7 SQL databases. The reason I did this was to test my Backup_Restore utility under actual conditions where the entire SQL is compromised and deleted.

Before I started I backed up all of the databases just the same way I do everyday using the Backup_Restore utility that I designed and modified for RavenNuke(tm). Next I entered my root account (simulated hack attack) and deleted the entire SQL installation. This effectively wiped out all of my databases.

I started to recover right away.
- I changed the root username and password
- Reinstalled MySQL.
- Used phpMyAdmin to recreate the databases, usernames and passwords
- Edited the Backup_Restore config file for each site by adding the new Db info I created earlier and uploaded them to each domain directory using FTP.
- Uploaded and installed the database tables and data.

Everything went smoothly and I was back online with no errors in just a few minutes. This was the ultimate method I could think of to fully test my Backup_Restore.utility and it passed with flying colors.

I am now working on a new release which will work even better than this first release.

I did discover an error a couple of days later that I will need to address in the next stable release. When you install your database using Backup_Restore you must make sure that all tables in your database are dropped. This is easy to do using phpMyAdmin. If you don't drop the tables and data the BigDump restore utility will render an error message and stop.

I think that everyone should get a copy of my utility and use it to backup your databases daily. It only takes a few seconds to run the backup utility and have the data e-mailed to you. Visit me at http://www.papamikecreations.net to get your copy today.

Thanks and Happy Holidays to everyone