Creating a backup of a selected directory

Webmin allows you to easily back up the contents of a directory to a TAR (tape archive) file. Backup tasks are saved, so you can perform the backup again with a single click in the future.

Note

The TAR file format preserves information about file ownership and permissions set on each file. It does not, however, store the extended attributes of the files. If you're using extended attributes and an ext filesystem, you should use the dump command instead. Take a look at the Creating a backup of an entire mount point recipe of this chapter for more information about making backups with the dump command.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we will create backup files with names containing the current date. We need to enable this feature. So, before starting, navigate to System | Filesystem Backup | Module Config and answer Yes to the question, Do strftime substitution of backup destinations?.

How to do it...

1. Create a directory to store backups in the root directory...