By raycou on

Probably a dumb question! I have installed the Backup and Migrate module and when I use the module, I find two selection boxes. One is "Exclude the following tables altogether: " and the other is "Exclude the data from the following tables: ". When the page loads, there is a selection highlighted in each box. Presumably it is the last one that I selected on my last visit to it.

So the dumb question is how do I select "none"? In other words backup all of the tables and data in them. I suppose another question is if I must select a table not to back up (and data) which one would should I choose?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

pobster’s picture

pobster commented

It's not a stupid question you'll be pleased to hear ;o) You'll nearly always want to include *all* the tables, it doesn't hurt to have them even if they are empty. Which of course - is the difference between the two options... Tables which can safely be left empty are notably the cache tables, since they hold information which can be recreated at any time (they're for speeding up page loads by storing heavy sql queries so they don't need to be run multiple times) others less important are the access/ accesslog tables which store all your visitor tracking (you might want it... You might not...?) Your sessions table stores your currently logged in users cookie info, so isn't completely important? And lastly (I guess?) is your watchdog table which holds all your Drupal logging, which unless you're a developer - you probably won't need. Well... At least, you won't need to back it up particularly anyway.

...BTW to unselect all is the same way you'd unselect anything? You 'deselect' a selected cell by holding either your CTRL key (or your Command key on a Mac).

Pobster

raycou’s picture

raycou commented

Thanks for such a great comprehensive answer. Now I am trying to figure out why when I try to migrate the site to a new location as a backup, everything appears to be in order except the FCKeditor module that I installed on it. I used the Backup and Migrate function and on inspection the FCKeditor folder seems to be missing from the new site.

I tested this a couple of times and get a message "Restore complete. 39712 SQL commands executed.", but no FCKeditor?????

Perhaps a little detective work may yield the answer for me before I add a new string. Not a big deal but certainly a curiosity.

scoutbaker’s picture

scoutbaker commented

The module only backs up the database. It does not back up the file system.

raycou’s picture

raycou commented

That should have been obvious to me. (but it wasn't) I have been snooping around to see if I could find something something that would backup the files too. Any suggestions? Thanks a bunch. I may actually get this project together with the help of all of you.