If you get errors when using the Magento admin to do a backup of your database, we found this solution:
Open: /lib/Varien/Data/Collection/Filesystem.php
Find this line:
foreach (glob($folder . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . ‘*’) as $node) {
Change it to read:
foreach ((array)glob($folder . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . ‘*’) as $node) {
This cured our problem of getting error messages in Magento when trying to do a database backup with the Magento admin panel.