How to bring back Scheduled Backups in Plesk 11

For those of you who hadn’t noticed, automatic scheduled backups are no longer working in Plesk 11 with some distributions. It’s not just you, and it’s not just your configuration. It’s a known issue according to this forum thread.

Lucky for us there’s a simple script which can bring this ever so important functionality back. Why Parallels is not addressing this with a Micro Update is beyond me (we’re already at 11.0.9 MU15 and it’s September 2012 at the time of writing).

In this article I’ll show you how to install the script step by step. I assume you’re logged onto your system as root and know your way around the command line.

First of all we need the script on our server. The actual location of the file on your system doesn’t matter as this is a shell script and we’ll execute it in a moment.

You can find the script on page 1 of this forum thread, or in case that link ever goes down here’s a local copy on my server:

• download the Plesk 11 Auto Backup Script

You can either FTP it to your server (any web space will do) or you can grab it via wget.

wget https://wpguru.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/install_cron_backup.zip

Now let’s unzip it so we can use the script:

unzip install_cron_backup.zip

Once you have it, change permissions of the file so we can execute it:

chmod +x install_cron_backup.sh

And finally, let’s run the script:

./install_cron_backup.sh

That’s it! You’ll receive no feedback whatsoever, it should just work. No need to reboot your system or restart Plesk. No need to manually schedule the script – Plesk should take care of it from here.

To verify that it actually works, log in to your Plesk Panel and head over to Tools and Settings – Backup Manager. Schedule a backup in a few minutes time. I recommend using your server configuration only (without the content) as this will complete the backup much quicker.

Also, check your server time before you schedule the backup: if your server says it’s 15:10, schedule the backup for 15:15. Grab a coffee and see if it’s worked (in our example you should see results by 15:20).

Just as a reminder: even if you’re backing up to an FTP repository, Plesk will always create a backup to the local server first and then copy the file over afterwards. Just in case you see your backup popping up on your local server, check again in a moment.

YIKES: I’ve just found out that manual backups are transferred to the FTP repo, but scheduled backups are not! It’s a known issue, we’re all waiting for a solution there…