Backup folder structure

Virtualmin
1

I am trying to setup backup of my domains on a remote server via SSH and after some tweaking it worked ok.

However I am wondering what will happen if I don’t need to restore the entire backup back, but lets say the home folder. I tried manually unzipping the tar.gz file and it ended in 10 different folders, all of them containing chunks from my home folder. Combining them would be a nightmare. Even worse if I am looking at particular subfolder, which could be spread in 3 different folders.

To be more clear, lets say I have the following structure:

–public_html
----1.html
----2.html
----3.html
----images
------home.jpg
------car.jpg

The way I see it after unarchiving the tar file is:

–2346778
----public_html
------1.html
–3466476
----public_html
------2.html
–3434466
----public_html
------images
--------car.jpg
–4353454
----publich_html
------3.html
------images
--------house.jpg

So if I am looking to restore the folder images and all its content I need to browse all folders in the backup and individually pick up all the pieces. Sounds very time consuming and ineffective.

Am I right to assume that in this case it is much better to just setup a cronjob to rsync the home folder or I am missing something?

2

sorry, the formatting didn’t work, I still hope it is clear what I am asking.

3

You don’t need to manually unpack the backup or so. When performing the restore in Virtualmin, you get the choice to select what parts of the backup to actually restore (check it out by clicking through the restore process without actually starting it). You can deselect everything but the home folder there.

4

I tried, but it still gives me the option to restore the entire home folder, it is of no help if I want to restore just one subfolder.

Thanks anyway, I think I will use the virtualmin backup to save all settings and will use rsync for the folders.

5

Ah okay, yes if you only want to restore a specific folder, the built-in options of Virtualmin won’t suffice. rsync is an alternative, yes, I use it too for a file hosting server.