-z is the compress (globalzip), -p is preserve permissions.

and I'd say they should take similar times, at max a large db should only be a couple of minutes.

What is the parameter to preserve the document permissions if -p does not work?

Thanks for the review, I just moved a 700mb tar of someone's html/php files (yes, it's a huge site, the db tar is about the same size ). It only took me about 8 hours as opposed to 3 days my old way

Totally overlooked this post...



I believe -p is the only way to preserve permissions while utilizing Tar to create an archive...

Yeh, theres often faster ways to do things hehe...

My favorite is to create the archive, move it to a web directory, then use wget on the destination machine to snag the file... No downloading on your part required, and can usually do a 700mb file in seconds...

There wasn't ssh on the old server. :smash:

Yikes, that's one heck of a drawback... SSH just makes things fun ;)...

If it's a linux maxhine, you could use system() or exec() to issue shell commands (if the machine allows it); I have a site on a server I don't have SSH access to and that's how I roll out my maintenance (backups)

hmm... I do have this shell script I probably could have used...

There are a lot of "PHP Virtual Shell" scripts out there that I've been guilty of using; when you get backed into a wall... lol

Is this still a fairly accurate guide? This is exactly why I logged in this morning. Thanks, Gizmo! Problem is ... I don't have command line access on the old server and I want to move to a new server at some point. Any recommendations on hosting providers?

Thanks,
Bill

Ok, it still appears to be fairly accurate. I'm getting the following error when trying to backup the forums:

write failed, user disk limit reached mysqldump: Got errno 69 on write

Does anyone know if there are any options to store the backup elsewhere during the backup? I'll also post on the hosting support forums. Thanks!