Restoring a webmin backup fails

While attempting to fix a broken Postfix server due to a separate issue (https://www.virtualmin.com/node/37737) I tried to restore settings from a webmin backup, using Webmin > Webmin > Backup Configuration Files > Restore now and selecting "Network Configuration" and/or "Postfix Mail Server" under "Modules to restore".

Initially I selected Yes for "Just show what will be restored?" and a sensible-looking list of files was shown. But when I selected No for that option to do the real restore I got "0 files restored" every time I tried.

I was running it with root privileges so I doubt that file permissions or ownership were the problem. I'm also not sure if any of the listed files were actually restored despite the discouraging message - if they were it didn't solve my problem and I ended up restoring the entire server from a snapshot backup.

Unfortunately the Webmin Scheduled Backup screen (unusually) doesn't offer any way to date stamp or rotate the backups, so I only had a single backup file to try. Could that be a feature request as well please?

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Comments

The "0 files restored" message can happen if either you didn't select any modules to restore files for, or if the backup doesn't contain the chosen modules. Could that be the case here?

BTW, date-based backups are possible - just use codes like %d and %M in the destination path.

philmck's picture
Submitted by philmck on Sat, 08/08/2015 - 11:34

I did check the selected modules and backup contents (several times). As I say, the expected files show up if I select "Just show what will be restored?".

I also tried using codes like %d and %M in the destination path, but they just appear in the saved file's name as untranslated codes. They work for Virtualmin backups but not for Webmin backups.

Was this backup made from the same system you are trying to restore it on?

Regarding the date substitutions, make sure that on the Module Config page the "Do strftime substitution of backup destinations?" option is set to "Yes"