Admin: Backup & Restore

The Backup & Restore page exports this server’s accounts and license to a single archive, and restores one. It sits under System in the admin menu, beside License, because a backup carries the license as well as the users.

Backups need a purchased license

A free trial can’t export a backup, and neither can an unlicensed server or one whose license has expired, so don’t plan on a backup to carry users off a trial server. If you’re trying Sovereign on one machine and mean to settle on another, buy a license before you move, or expect to set the accounts up again on the new server. A backup never carries a trial, and restoring one never starts a new trial: each install gets one, ever. A server without a purchased license can only restore a backup made by a licensed server.

These limits are what keep a free trial from running forever. If a trial could be exported near its end and restored onto a fresh server with a trial of its own, the same users and history could hop from one trial to the next indefinitely.

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What a Backup Contains

For every user on the server, a backup holds the account and password, roles and social logins, playback preferences, favorites, playback progress, and profile picture.

It also carries the server’s install identity and its license. That’s what lets a server rebuilt from scratch come back as the install its license belongs to, rather than as a new server with no license at all. Media, library metadata and server settings aren’t included. A rebuilt server picks those up again from its media sources and configuration.

Caution

A backup carries account data. Keep it somewhere you’d be comfortable keeping your own credentials.

Export

Export Backup downloads the archive. Keep it somewhere other than the server it came from, or it won’t help when that server is lost.

Backups need a purchased license. On a free trial, on a plan that doesn’t include backups, or on a server whose license isn’t in good standing, Export Backup is disabled with the reason beside it. User Backups has the details.

Restore

Import Backup restores an archive, which is how you move users onto a new install without asking everyone to start over. Accounts that already exist on the server are skipped rather than overwritten, and the import reports what it restored for each user.

Import your media before you restore a backup. A favorite or resume position whose movie, series or file isn’t in the library yet is dropped from the restored user, and importing that media afterwards won’t bring it back.

The install identity and license are restored only onto a server that holds no license of its own, or only a free trial, which the license in the backup then replaces. They’re restored only from a backup that hasn’t been edited by hand since it was exported. On a server whose own license includes backups, an edited backup still restores its accounts. Whenever the identity and license aren’t restored, the import says why.

Import Backup stays available even when export isn’t, because a rebuilt server with no license, or on a free trial, can restore an unedited backup made by a licensed server, and that brings the license back. Any other import on a server without backups in its license is refused before anything is written.

Related Pages

• The accounts a backup restores are managed on Users.
• What each license standing allows is covered in Licensing.