#backup
24 one-liners with this tag.
All one-liners tagged backup
Create a dated backup copy of a file
$cp -p -- /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/.htaccess /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/.htaccess.bak-$(date +%F-%H%M)
Pack a directory into a ZIP archive
$cd /var/www/vhosts/example.com && zip -rq /var/www/vhosts/example.com/private/httpdocs.zip httpdocs
Back up a Docker volume to a tar archive
#docker run --rm -v app_data:/data:ro -v /root/docker-backup:/backup alpine tar czf /backup/app_data.tar.gz -C /data .
Back up a single database consistently as gzip
$mysqldump --single-transaction --quick -u dbuser -p wp_example | gzip > /var/www/vhosts/example.com/wp_example.sql.gz
Back up a single domain with Plesk tools
#plesk bin pleskbackup --domains-name example.com --output-file=/root/backup-example.com.tar
Back up all databases into one gzipped file
#mysqldump --single-transaction --quick --all-databases --routines --events | gzip > /root/all-databases.sql.gz
Back up each database into its own gzipped file
#for db in $(mysql -NBe 'SHOW DATABASES' | grep -Ev '^(information_schema|performance_schema|sys)$'); do mysqldump --single-transaction --quick "$db" | gzip > "/root/db-backup/$db.sql.gz"; done
Back up iptables rules to a file
#iptables-save > /root/iptables-$(date +%F-%H%M).rules
Back up the crontab to a dated file
$crontab -l > ~/crontab-backup-$(date +%F).txt
Back up the WordPress database as a gzip file
$wp db export - --path=/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs | gzip > /var/www/vhosts/example.com/db-backup.sql.gz
Create a compressed tar backup with the date in the name
#tar -czf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs .
Extract a tar.gz archive without overwriting files
$mkdir -p /tmp/restore && tar -xzf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz -C /tmp/restore --skip-old-files
Import a gzipped dump into the WordPress database
$gunzip -c /var/www/vhosts/example.com/db-backup.sql.gz | wp db import - --path=/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs
Incremental backup with hard links using rsync --link-dest
#rsync -a --link-dest=/backup/example.com/aktuell /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ /backup/example.com/$(date +%F)/ && ln -sfn /backup/example.com/$(date +%F) /backup/example.com/aktuell
List the contents of a tar.gz archive
$tar -tzvf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz | head -50
Restore a single file from a tar backup
$mkdir -p /tmp/restore && tar -xzf /var/backups/example.com-httpdocs-2026-10-09.tar.gz -C /tmp/restore ./wp-config.php
Restore iptables rules from a backup
#iptables-restore --test < /root/iptables-2026-10-09-1200.rules && iptables-restore < /root/iptables-2026-10-09-1200.rules
Run a command with low CPU and IO priority
$nice -n 19 ionice -c 3 du -sh /var/www/vhosts
Save checksums of all files in a directory
$cd /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs && find . -type f -exec sha256sum {} + > /tmp/example.com.sha256
Stream a tar backup directly to another server over SSH
$tar -czf - -C /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs . | ssh webuser@backup.example.com 'cat > /home/webuser/backup/example.com-httpdocs.tar.gz'
Test rsync with a dry run
$rsync -av --dry-run /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ /backup/example.com/httpdocs/
Transfer files to another server with rsync over SSH
$rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p 22' /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ webuser@backup.example.com:/home/webuser/backup/httpdocs/
Verify a backup against the original using checksums
$rsync -rcn --itemize-changes /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/ /backup/example.com/httpdocs/
Verify files against saved checksums
$cd /backup/example.com/httpdocs && sha256sum -c --quiet /tmp/example.com.sha256