Backup WordPress website procedure for Linux

To backup your WordPress website on Linux you can follow these steps:

1. Log in via ssh to your server.

2. Change directory where your website files are located. For example:
$ cd /home/shkodenko/public_html

3. Find out MySQL connection settings using command:
$ grep -ni "DB" ./wp-config.php

You will need these lines below.
19:define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘db_name’);
22:define(‘DB_USER’, ‘db_user’);
25:define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘db_password’);
28:define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’);

4. Create backup of MySQL database using mysqldump utility. For example:
$ mysqldump -h localhost -u db_user -p db_name > ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql

5. I am checking MySQL dump using tail and head utilities:
$ tail -n 15 -f ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql
$ head -n 15 -f ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql
I am using sha1sum command to get SQL dump file checksum:

$ sha1sum -b ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql
I am checking SQL dump file information usinng ls command:

$ ls -Alh ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql
All these steps above in 5 can be skipped. I making these checks for history and possible future verification purposes if something will go wrong.

6. Making archive:
tar cpjf /home/shkodenko/shkodenko.com-backup.tar.bz2 ./

7. Some additional commands for verification with backup file:
$ sha1sum -b /home/shkodenko/shkodenko.com-backup.tar.bz2
$ ls -Alh /home/shkodenko/shkodenko.com-backup.tar.bz2

8. Cleaning garbage:
$ rm -fv ./wp-content/uploads/db_name.sql