./lampp security

setup password for the lampp demo web page
turn off access Mysql via the network

Then, the Mysql server could not start. Even I use command:

./lampp startmysql

it said

Mysql Starting and exit to command line.

(note: the apache friends package version is 1.63a)

So, I went to apachefriends.org to find the answer and unfortunately I did not find anything that can help. I decided to upgrade it to the latest version(1.63b) because this server is currently not in service. I don’t worry about the data lose. Upgrading was smooth, but it did not work too.

Anyway, the last result, I removed the whole folder /lampp from /opt and re-installed  apache friends version 1.63b. It worked fine.

One thing I need to remember: Don’t forget stop lampp before remove the folder /lampp, otherwise, it will waste a lot of time to kill some process manually.

Reason: As usual, I checked the database backup file and found the size was really small. It meant the backup script had some problems. After then, I was told that the database’s root password had been changed. Oh, that was the culprit!

Now that I know what the problem is, how can I improve it?

The first thing comes to my mind is: I must add a flow controller statement which will tell me (by email)  if the backup process is successful.  But what if I read the email too late and the backup time is missed? Fortunately, the password is stored in a configuration file. Whenever the DB admin changes the password, she has to change the configuration file. So the better solution is: read the password from the configuration file instead of hard code in the script file.

#=============================================================================
# MySQL Backup Script (file name: dbbackup)
# Ver. 0.2
# Author Jason Qi (email@yahoo.com)
#
# This script works under CentOS with Appache Friends.
# Before you start, please create folder
#   /opt/lampp\dbbackup
#     and
#   /opt/lampp/htdocs/cams2/dbbackup
# Put this file into /opt/lampp/bin and chmod +x dbbackup.
# Create dbbackupmsg file and put it into /opt/lampp/bin. The content inside
# this file is "Backup is done"
#  
# The last step is create a crontab
#   crontab -e
#   30 3 * * * /opt/lampp/bin/dbbackup
#=============================================================================
#
# Please change the params to fit the system needs.
#
#=============================================================================

USER="root";
PASSWORD="password";
DATABASE="dbname";
EMAIL="email@yahoo.com";
MYSQLDUMP="/opt/lampp/bin/mysqldump";

MPATH="/opt/lampp/dbbackup";
CPATH="/opt/lampp/htdocs/cams2/dbbackup";

MDATE=`/bin/date "+%Y-%m-%d-%Hh%Mm"`;
CDATE=`/bin/date "+%A"`;

MDUMP="$DATABASE-$MDATE";
CDUMP="$DATABASE-$CDATE";

EXT1=".sql";
EXT2=".tar";
EXT3=".gz";

#=============================================================================
# Change log
#=============================================================================
# VER 0.2 - 2007-04-28 Revise thid document by changing all "\" to "/" in pathname
#                      Add crontab command to this document
# VER 0.1 - 2007-04-15
#   Initial Release
#=============================================================================

$MYSQLDUMP –add-drop-table –user=$USER –password=$PASSWORD $DATABASE >> "$DUMP$EXT1";

/bin/tar -cf $MPATH/$DATABASE-$MDATE$EXT2 $DUMP$EXT1;
/bin/gzip -f $MPATH/$DATABASE-$MDATE$EXT2;

/bin/tar -cf $CPATH/$DATABASE-$CDATE$EXT2 $DUMP$EXT1;
/bin/gzip -f $CPATH/$DATABASE-$CDATE$EXT2;

/bin/rm -f $DUMP$EXT1;

cat "dbbackupmsg" | mail -s $MDATE-"Backup is done" $EMAIL;

Step 1 Dump the database structure and content:

  mysqldump -u username -p dbname >> dump.sql

Step 2 Create a new empty database.
 
  mysql -u username -p dbname
  mysql> create database newdbname;

Step 3 Reload the database into a new database with a different name:

  mysql -u username -p newdbname < dump.sql