README

cPanel-php-remote-backup is a simple php script that allows to make remote backups from a remote cPanel account to a ftp or scp server.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
• Known limitations
• Support
• Contributing

Background

Default cPanel full backup feature does not allow to schedule backups. To generate a backup and transfer to a remote ftp/scp server, you need generate it manually from your cPanel account.

This script aims to schedule full backup generation and ftp/scp transfer using cron and the cPanel xmlapi-php PHP Class

Requirements

• PHP 5.3.2+
• Composer
• cPanel version 11+

Installation

Download or clone the project.

Run composer to install dependencies.

composer install

Usage

• Rename or copy example.settings.php to settings.php.
• Edit the new settings.php file and fill the cPanel and remote ftp server settings.
• Test configuration and backup generation:

  php cpanel-remote-ftp-backup.php

  • If everything goes ok, the script will end without any message, otherwise you will receive an error.
• Schedule script execution to the cron table.

Known limitations

cPanel full backups are not rocket science and you should not rely on them, specially if you are using cheap shared hosting plans.

(USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK)

• At the moment this README was made, the cPanel xmlapi-php PHP Class releases are too old. Since xmlapi-php does not provide a composer.json, this project composer configuration will fetch last commit from dev-master branch and register xmlapi.php Class for auto loading. If you find any problem regarding to the xmlapi-php Class, please open an issue or try to use an older version. The cPanel xmlapi-php PHP Class commit used was b9593c7, from 18 Jan 2015.
• The cPanel xmlapi-php PHP Class uses the deprecated cPanel API 1. However, no equivalent backup function exists in newer APIs.
• Some common problems:
  • xmlapi-php Class returns success but the backup is not transferred to ftp server.
    • It's most likely that the generation process got stuck on cPanel.
  • xmlapi-php Class returns "Can't call method "login" on an undefined value" message.
    • It's most likely that the ftp transfer has been blocked. Some hosting providers only allow ftp backup transfers at a certain period of the day.
  • In this cases try to manually run the backup generation/transfer on cPanel interface.
    • If you get the same error, try to contact to hosting provider.
    • If you are able to generate and transfer backup via cPanel and it fails with cPanel-php-remote-backup script, please open an issue for support.

Support

Please open an issue for support.

Contributing

Please contribute using Github Flow. Create a branch, add commits, and open a pull request.