Test pre-requisites The following can be found in Home ► Site administration ► Courses ► Backups ► Automated backup setup backup_auto_active to Enabled backup_auto_storage to Specified directory for automated backups backup_auto_destination to your moodledata/backups backup_auto_keep to 2 backup_shortname to False (unticked) Wait 2 minutes between each CLI command specified below (This is important!) The number of backups to have is the number of backups PER course Test steps Run php admin/cli/automated_backups.php 3 times. Bash script for your convenience: php admin/cli/automated_backups.php; for i in {1..2} ; do echo 'Waiting...' && sleep 120 && php admin/cli/automated_backups.php; done; echo ' DONE ' Make sure you have no more than 2 backups in your backup directory Set backup_shortname to True (unticked) Run php admin/cli/automated_backups.php Make sure you have 2 backups, the newest using the shortname, the other one not Set backup_shortname to False (unticked) Make sure you have 2 backups, the oldest using the shortname, the other one not Destructive test Drop some other files in the backup directory Fake zips Use similar file names Rename a course with another ... Run the CLI and make sure only the right files are deleted! (Setting backup_auto_keep to a higher value might help here.)