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Managing Backups with SFTP

There are a few options when wanting to download or delete the server backups on a VPS or Dedicated Server. The first will be how to manage it with SFTP. First you'll need an FTP client. In this article we will use Filezilla. Please note that while the screenshots shown are from a Mac, Filezilla works with most operating systems.

To download Filezilla, please see: http://filezilla-project.org

In order to use SFTP you'll need to set a root password and know your server IP.

How to set your Root Password

To get started, open Filezilla.

Go to File in the top left, and select Site Manager

Now click New Site. You'll need to enter the follow information:

Host: Your Server IP
Protocol: SFTP
Logon Type: Normal
Username: root
Password: your root password

Once you have entered the information, click Connect.

When you connect you will likely be prompted to accent the host key. Click OK and proceed.

Once connected you will be taken to /root which is the root users directory, but you can't do much in there, so go up a directory.

Now that your at / you can navigate to the backup directory and then the cpbackup directory.

If you are using Legacy Backup (the default backup manager) you'll want to go to /backup/cpbackup, however if you are using Backup Configuration then you'll want to go to /backup

In the /backup/cpbackup directory you will find a daily, weekly, and monthly directory. Depending on which backups you have running, you'll want to go to directory for them. By default daily and monthly backups are running. So if you want to modify your daily backup you'd go to the daily directory.

The file you want to get will be username.tar.gz, username would be the account's Username. Once you've there, you can drag and drop the file to where you want to download it. Or you can delete it if that is your purpose for coming here.

At this point it is strongly recommend downloading anything before you delete it. Deleting any of your files is a bad idea unless you know what it is, you have got a backup, or you are 100% sure you don't need it.

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