Cianer.com

The method I have for backing up my Joomla-powered websites is a little on the cheap n' nasty side but its easy to maintain & it works.  Its a two-stage process:

1. I use a cronjob to dump the database contents into a plain text file once a day.  This is done via a small script called databaseBackups.sh which does a mysqldump on each website on the server:

   #!/bin/sh
   
   # This scripts runs nightly via a cronjob & backs up all the databases to text file
   # These text files are then backed up onto the server in my house via rsnapshot
   
   mysqldump --user=foo --password=bar database1 > /home/cianer/databaseBackups/website1.com.db
   mysqldump --user=foo --password=bar database2 > /home/cianer/databaseBackups/website2.com.db

   Then create a cronjob to invoke that script once a day:

   cianer@viking:~$ crontab cianers.crontab 
   cianer@viking:~$ crontab -l
   # min            hour  day/mon  month  day /week  command
     0              1     *        *      *          /home/cianer/databaseBackups.sh
   
   cianer@viking:~$ 
   

2. I then use rsnapshot to pull the entire Joomla installation, along with the database files, to the backup server in my house as described here.

Notes on (in)security:

• Obviously you have to make sure databaseBackups.sh is in a directory not accessible via the web and make sure to chmod 700 databaseBackups.sh.
• If anyone with shell access on the server does a ps when your script is running they will see your database password.  This is not an issue for me since I trust the guy I share the server with (and he has root access so he could do worse damage if he chose so its irrelevant) but it might be for you.
• You can get rsnapshot to run the mysqldump for you over an ssh connection if you want (you'll have to RTFM for that) but I like having the most recent database on the server anyway.  Came in very handy the one time a site of mine was hacked!