Photo By rachfog

Everybody knows backups are important. We backup all customers VPS files daily, and we keep at least 7 days of backups. Still, this type of backup is not ideal for backing up MySQL  instances that use InnoDB tables. Especially if you try to restore a specific DB.

To generate MySQL backups we recommend you dump your DBs using mysqldump. Mysqldump can be used to dump a database or a collection of databases for backup or transfer to another SQL server (not necessarily a MySQL server). Here we are sharing a simple shell script that will dump all DBs of a MySQL server, and keep a number of backups in your VPS. You can adjust the number of days to keep to fit your confort level. The end result is a compressed file for each DB backup.

To add this script to the server cronjobs, simply store the script in /etc/cron.daily/ and give it execution permissions:

$ cd /etc/cron.daily/; curl -O https://raw.github.com/gist/1670895/backup_mysql.sh

$ chmod +x backup_mysql.sh

Make sure you edit the file for the username/password so mysqldump can connect and generate the dump. The files will be stored in /var/archives/mysql/ by default.

You can view or download the Gist we have created for this script.

Temos o prazer de anunciar o suporte em português no nosso painel de controle. A interface foi totalmente personalizada e suporta o português. Se você tem alguma sugestão sobre o que poderia ser melhorado, por favor, avise-nos, precisamos do seu feedback!

Painel de Controle em português:

Tudo isso foi possível graças ao apoio de traduções Symfony2. Nós também economizamos muito tempo usando o nosso pacote de código aberto para Symfony2 TranslationEditorBundle, que fornece uma interface de usuário baseada na web para editar arquivos de tradução.

We are pleased to announce the multilingual support in our VPS Control Panel (Launched Jan. 17th 2012). The first language released, apart from English, is Spanish. More languages are already being worked on and will be available very soon. We will be releasing them as they are finished.

If you have any suggestions on what languages we should support next, please let us know, we need feedback!

All of this has been possible thanks to the translations support of Symfony2. We also saved a lot of time by using our open-sourced bundle for Symfony2 TranslationEditorBundle which provides a web based UI to edit translation files.

The PHP team released PHP 5.3.9 last week, the latest version of the 5.3 branch. It includes numerous bug fixes and several enhancements. The most important fix is the one that the added max_input_vars directive to prevent attacks based on hash collisions, a hot topic in the past weeks.

This version is already installed in all Shared Hosting servers with PHP 5.3 and is available to all VPS customers. If your VPS is using our RPM or Deb package repository, you can simple upgrade PHP by running:

# CentOS

$ yum upgrade php53-*

# Ubuntu

$ apt-get upgrade php53-*

If your VPS is not using our repository, and you want to switch, take a look at this Knowledge Base articles:

• Install / upgrade PHP using YUM and RPM packages (CentOS)
• Install / upgrade PHP using APT and Deb packages (Ubuntu)

If you are using a PHP installation compiled from source, you can follow these instructions to upgrade PHP:

• How to recompile PHP to upgrade or add new extensions in VPS

As always, if you have any questions, please contact Customer Support.

Luego de un intenso trabajo hemos lanzado el soporte de multi-idiomas en nuestro Panel de Control para VPS de ServerGrove. El primer idioma que sale a la luz (además del inglés) es el español/castellano. Esto incluye también la versión móvil del sistema.

Iremos agregando otros idiomas con el correr del tiempo.

Gracias al soporte de traducciones de Symfony2 hemos podido completar el trabajo en tiempo record. También nos ayudo mucho el bundle para Symfony2 que creamos y pusimos a disposición de todos, el TranslationEditorBundle, provee una interfaz web para editar los archivos de traducción de Symfony2.

Last night Pablo gave a talk at the South Florida PHP Users Group. The talk was an introduction to Symfony2. The reception was quite good and I think the audience liked what they saw about Symfony2. It’s always interesting to engage with the PHP community about Symfony2, especially here in the US where it’s not as popular as the other PHP frameworks. More needs to be done to promote Symfony in the States and break the stereotypes that exist around the framework. We wanted to thank the South Florida PHP User Group for giving us the opportunity to present.

We have been working a lot with Symfony2 translations lately (we translated our website to Spanish and we are in the process of translating our control panel too). Dealing with multiple translation files is not difficult, but it takes time, lots of copy & paste. We have found that is quite easy to make mistakes, create duplicate lines, etc… in short, it’s messy.

To tame the translation chaos we decided to create a simple web based editor to deal with Symfony2 translations. The result is the TranslationEditorBundle and it’s publicly available for anyone to use and contribute to.

To install it, follow the few quick steps listed in the README file.

Import your translations with the CLI command. Then fire up your browser and go to http://your-project.url/translations/editor and you will see the list of all your strings. Click on any of the language texts and edit right away. When you are done simple export the translations back to the files in your project.

The editor is quite simple and we hope to add more features as we need them. We also hope you find it useful and contribute any missing functionality that you may need.

¿Has sido muy perezoso para darle una oportunidad a ServerGrove y cambiar de Hosting? ¿Has estado molesto con tu proveedor de hosting actual debido a su terrible soporte? ¿Has estado utilizado el hosting de una compañía que soporte #SOPA?

Vamos a darte un incentivo para iniciar el 2012 con el pie derecho, enderezarte e iniciar el año con un servidor con olor a nuevo.

El acuerdo funciona de esta forma: obtienes un VPS por $3 por los primeros tres meses. Ahora debes seguir el siguiente procedimiento:

- Te registras por un VPS100, VPS200 o un VPS300 utilizando la promoción: switchindealvps100 para el VPS100, switchindealvps200 para el VPS200 y switchindealvps300 para el VPS300.

- Usa el método de pago mensual. Puedes cambiarlo luego de pasado los tres meses si tu quieres.

- Se te cobrará solo $1 por el primer mes, lo mismo por el segundo y el tercero. Luego de esto se volverá al precio regular.

- Si no estás a gusto, tienes una garantía de devolución de dinero de 30 días por lo que te devolveremos tu dólar (pero estamos seguros de te va a gustar estar con nosotros). Si quieres quedarte por tres meses y luego cancelar, no hay problema, no tenemos contratos a término por lo que puedes cancelar en cualquier momento.

- Esta oferta expira a fines de Enero y es probable que no se repita muy pronto. Registrate aquí.

Si todavía no has visto nuestro increíble panel de control, aquí hay un pequeño video que muestra porque es tan sencillo hostear con ServerGrove:

Have you been too lazy to switch hosts to give ServerGrove a spin in 2011? Have you been cursing your current hosting company complaining about their terrible support? Have you been hosting with a company that supports #SOPA?

Let us give you some incentive to start off 2012 on the right foot, clean up your act and start out the year with a new car scented server.

Here is how the switchin’ deal works: you get a VPS for $3 for the first three months. This is how it’s going to go down:

- You sign-up for a VPS100, VPS200 or a VPS300
using the promo code: switchindealvps100 for a VPS100, switchindealvps200 for a VPS200 and switchindealvps300 for a VPS300

- Use the monthly payment method. You can switch after the three months are over if you want to.

- You will be charged only $1 for the the first month, same for the second and third. After that it’s back to the normal price.

- If you are not happy, you have a 30 day money back guarantee and you will get your buck back (but we are that sure you are going to like us). If you want to stay for three months then cancel, that’s fine too, we have no term contracts so you can cancel at any time.

- This offer expires end of January and it’s unlikely we will do this again very soon.

Feel that positive 2012 vibration and try out a ServerGrove VPS. Sign up is here.

In case you have not seen our awesome control panel, here is a short video that shows why it’s easier to host with ServerGrove:

We have updated the available VPS images with the following versions:

• Ubuntu 11.04
• CentOS 5.7

Both OSes are available on 32 and 64 bit versions. The images include the latest stable PHP version available: 5.3.8 at the time of this post.

There is a new change worth mentioning in these images: from now on, PHP is installed using deb (Ubuntu) and rpm (CentOS) packages, so upgrading to the next stable version will be a matter of running apt-get upgrade php53 in Ubuntu and yum upgrade php53 in CentOS. Soon, we will also make this deb and rpm packages available for anyone to download, stay tuned to our blog.

For those of you who want to use the new images, you can get one by rebuilding your server. Make sure to backup all your files since rebuilding will delete all files. To rebuild your server: login to the VPS Control Panel, select the server you want to rebuild, click Rebuild and choose your new VPS image. Repeat: Make sure you backup your files and database first!

And since this will probably be our last post of 2011: Happy New Year!