Resolved How to download a full backup of plesk (not only the .xml file, but the full server backup)

[Dave_K]

Hi There!

I'm relatively new to Plesk (and to this forum), I have Plesk running on a VPS, which I want to reinstall, but before I do that I want to download a full backup.

It seems that if I download a "full" backup from the backup manager in Plesk, it only downloads a XML file with references (which is only a few kb in size).
I'm going to completely erase the VPS so any references in the XML will become obsolete, that's why I would like to download a full (cold, super big) backup which I can store on an external hard drive.

I have searched for an answer on Google and made a quick search on this forum but I couldn't find an answer to the above.

I would really appreciate someones advice on this matter, thank you in advance.

Kind regards,
Dave

 

[IgorG]

What do you see when you go to Tools&Settings > Backup Manager? Do you create backups stored remotely on the FTP server or are they stored locally?
For example, on my Plesk server, I see full and incremental backups stored on remote FTP server and I can download them:

 

[Dave_K]

Hi Igor, thank you for your reply.
I haven't setup remote storage yet, I thought I could download the full 305 MB (see picture below) to my local computer by clicking the green download arrow:


But when I click the green download arrow, instead it only downloads a 26KB Tar file containing an XML:


Do I have to setup some kind of remote storage, and then download it from that remote storage? (If really necessary I could try using my dropbox/google drive, but best case would be to just be able to download it to my local mac directly from Plesk)

Kind regards,
Dave

 

[IgorG]

When you try to download backup make sure that log file /var/log/plesk/PMM/migration.log contains something like this:

INFO: SignError Cannot read public key [common/plesk-utils/PMM/backup_sign_lib/backup_sign.cpp:SignError]
void plesk::composePublickey(const string&, std::__cxx11::string&, std::__cxx11::string&)
INFO: pmm-ras finished. Exit code: 1

That means Backup certificate is missing.
In this case regenerate the backup sign key using below command:

# /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/backup_sign --generate

Try to download a backup again.

 

[Dave_K]

Dear Igor,

The log indeed indicated that it could not read the public key, I ran your command and it resolved the issue as the file is now completely downloaded (full size)
Thank you for your help!

Kind regards,
Dave