AUTOM8N-4.8-4 and Nginx 1.17.0-1 now available

  • May 29, 2019 by Anoop Alias

Hello,

AUTOM8N-4.8-4 and Nginx 1.17.0-1 now available for upgrade  The minor version has been advanced as we introduce a new feature of Borgmatic/Borg backup also in the Autom8n plugin . The Plugin also use mariabackup(https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/mariabackup-overview/)   to back up a restorable /var/lib/mysql if using MariaDB ( cPanel backup simply tars the /var/lib/mysql which may not work correctly all the time and may fail on system restores!)

Whats new?

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Borgmatic/Borg backup --  Borg is a deduplicating backup software -- https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ 

and is a perfect tool for taking daily backups. 

Autom8n setup Borgmatic in such a way that it:

a. Take a backup using the pkgacct tool using the --skiphomedir flag

b. Backup entire MariaDB ( not MySQL!) using mariabackup

c. Backup system files

d. Backup /home ( or any additional homeX directories ) directly using the borg backup program 

Which helps you to individually restore a file or a directory, a cPanel account (which include a mysqldump of the databases), A system file or the entire MySQL instance (and then dump a single database if required) 

We have addressed the following shortcoming of the cPanel backup program with borg backup

1. Slow ( cPanel backup simply tars/gzips the content every time and is therefore slow), while Borg is only slow on the first run and it propagates only the modified chunk of data on all subsequent backups

2. High Network bandwidth usage  -- Because all the data a transferred again and again to a remote backup host ,cPanel backup use significant network traffic 

3. High storage space requirement on the backup server -- cPanel backup store duplicate data again and again,while borg only stores the modified chunk of data (deduplication)

4. Non-Encrypted -- A malicious user who have access to the backup server can obtain login credentials etc.Borg encrypts data stored in the backup server and can be decrypted only with the use of a key file and the encryption passphrase

5. Temporary space usage -- For remote backups, cPanel first create a temporary backup on the server staging directory and then copy it over, while borg can directly upload the data without a staging directory

6. Daily retention only -- You cannot retain cPanel backup on an hourly basis, while borgmatic lets you do this 

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Autom8n makes the setup of Borg backup easy with the Borgmatic wrapper script and as a server administrator all you need to do is provide  the repo ( either a local directory or a remote path accessible over ssh) and an encryption passphrase.  Cron the borgmatic command in a frequency your server can finish up the backup and you are done!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdbLXdr49is


If you use Hetzner Storage Box , they support Borg version 1.1 out of the box or you can simply mount the drive as a CIFS mount to say /media/backup and setup the repository in Autom8n/borg setting to /media/backup

Ref:  https://autom8n.com/docs/borgmatic_backup.html

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Whats changed?

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Version update for Nginx,LibreSSL,Unison , Strong security for default server {} blocks by blocking files like php.ini, htaccess etc ,Bug fix in various caching templates like WP-Rocket ,Improvements in Cluster setup , DDOS mitigation acytivated on the master server is now propagated to all servers on cluster , Minor UI enhancements

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How to upgrade?

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https://autom8n.com/docs/Administration.html#upgrading-autom8n-and-nginx

https://autom8n.com/docs/Administration.html#autom8n-cluster-upgrade

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Feel free to get in touch anytime if you need assistance in plugin upgrade/setup


Thank you,

A U T O M 8 N