Backup

You need to backup the following items:

The configuration file config.php. Can be found in /etc/groupoffice or in the source directory.
The MySQL / MariaDB database. You can find the connection parameters in config.php.
The data folder. You can find the “file_storage_path” in the config.php file.
If you use the Group-Office mailserver, then also backup the e-mail that’s located in /var/mail/vhosts.

Recovery

To recover a backup simply replace the folders you’ve backed up using the information above and restore the database.

Oops, I accidentally deleted something…

Mistakes happen. Sometimes you’ve accidentally deleted something from Group-Office. You could then restore all missing items from a backup by merging. Please be aware that everthing that was deleted will be restored. Also the items that you deleted intentionally.

Steps:

Load the backup database in a temporary database called “groupoffice_temp” in this example:
```
mysql -e 'create database groupoffice_temp;'
mysql groupoffice_temp < backup.sql
```

Export the data with insert ignore statements so it will only import missing records:

mysqldump --no-create-info --insert-ignore --complete-insert groupoffice_temp > merge-data.sql

Or if you’d like to restore just some tables (be careful you need to know the database very well):
mysqldump --no-create-info --insert-ignore --complete-insert groupoffice_temp "core_pdf_block" "core_pdf_template" "core_email_template" "core_email_template_attachment" > merge-data.sql
If you would like to overwrite existing data you can use the –replace flag instead of –insert-ignore. Be careful!

Your file merge-data.sql will contain the command to insert in the database and ignore the insert if the record already exists. Now load this into your live database called “groupoffice_live” in this example:
```
mysql groupoffice_live < merge-data.sql
```
Now all records should be back in the database. To reset the Group-Office cache and sync states run the upgrade procdure in the browser:
```
https://groupoffice.example.com/install/upgrade.php
```
If you also need to restore missing files the use the command line utility rsync to restore the data.