I understand what you mean.
What I mean is that a tarball is a single file containing everything put into it. So if you have 1000 attachments at 2mb each then it'll go into one big file of around the 2gb mark.
Some hosts don't allow any one file at that kind of size, and the linux filesystem may also have restrictions on it.

So in terms of the script, there's no reason it won't work, but there might be technical limitations that will stop it.

Just installed it. Works perfectly. Thanks for making this.

Nice.

A suggestion: You mention 'those directories that dont change' in the first post, but I can't see anything about 'last modified date' in the screenshots.

Perhaps something like that, to give people an idea of what needs backing up?

Maybe a 'has changed since last backup?' flag?

I did think about putting some info in the listings, like size. Last modified is a good idea too.
I wrote the whole thing in about 6 hours today and wanted to see if:
a) it would work on other servers
b) many people would be interested

Early impressions seem to indicate that it could be relatively popular, especially if I make it more functional.

Very nice. I am very interested as it is kind of a mental thing in keeping back ups. The more current the back up the more at ease I am. I try and take a file structure back up at least once a week, but sometimes I cannot get around to it, and it gets done once a month, if that. This will help as all I will need to do is login to FTP and upload the single file.

This along with Paul M's auto database back up will be very helpful in the occurance something should happen so that we have the most up to date backup of the files, and getting the site back up in working order ASAP.

I will probably be installing this tonight.

Thanks!

Looks very helpful! I'll be sure to check this out... ;)

Hey bairy, you made my day bro :D:D , it worked.. it made a backup .tar file of 1.5GB in about 30 minutes.

Although, it didn't gave any confirmation message from vbulletin control pannel.

But still it rocks!!!!

I am some confused as this didn't work for me when I tried....

This should be compatable with 3.6.0 right? I will have to set up a developmental server and see if I can figure out if I have a conflict somewhere...

I would love to be able to customize this to so only backup my most critical directories (say classifieds or paid parts of the site) and do a nightly backup of these critical files via CRON or scheduled tasks...

The web server software, usually apache, generally has a timeout (default 5 mins I believe). After that time it will just ...stop... transmitting. Basically that means you won't get the confirm message. I don't know if it'll carry on in the background on all servers, lucky that it did for you.


Quarterbone,
As I said in the intro, I don't know how to debug this because I don't fully understand how web servers have their servers set up. It works on 3.6 and "compatible" hosts. They are, so far as I can work out, those which let you run exec() and have the tar executable installed. Cron jobs (etc) are planned for future versions.

OK, I have servers at three different hosts so I will set up some developmental forums on them and see if there is a possible php or mysql issue... I love the idea so I will work on resolving my issues...