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Restoring data from a backup of an existing site

EXISTING SITES ONLY

This section applies only to existing Reciprocal Net sites that are upgrading to the newest release of the Reciprocal Net site software.  It does not apply to new sites.

Locate the archive file from your old system created earlier in this chapter and copy it to your new system.  A good place to put it is the /root/ directory.  The next step is to deploy the files contained within the archive to your new system.  Go to a command prompt and type something like the following:

tar –xzvpPf /root/recipnet-backup-2008-01-08.tar.gz

, changing the archive’s path and file name as needed.  The program may take many minutes to finish running.

File ownerships and permissions were preserved from your old system to the best of tar’s ability.  If your old system was set up precisely according to Reciprocal Net recommendations then the file permissions on your new system should be functional.  However, some older systems may have been configured with different permissions on the /var/recipnet/data/ directory and its contents in an alternate security configuration.  You can ensure that all data files on your new system are accessible by going to a command prompt and typing the following two commands:

chmod -R a+r /var/recipnet/data

           

find /var/recipnet/data -type d –exec chmod a+x {} \;

The hard disk will churn for a few minutes as file permissions are updated.

TIPč Experienced system administrators may prefer to utilize an alternate permission structure for the files within /var/recipnet/data/ and should feel free to do so.  The only rules are these: the user recipnet must have read-write access to /var/recipnet/data/ (including the contents within it) and the user apache must have read access to it.  Additionally, some sites choose to allow members of the users group to manipulate these files directly, but such access is not required by the Reciprocal Net site software.

Next, some of the files that were extracted to your new system were MySQL database files.  It is necessary to bounce the mysqld daemon in order to activate them.  From the GNOME desktop, go to the System/Administration menu and launch the Services program as before.  Highlight mysqld and click the Restart button.  A success message should appear shortly.  Click OK.


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