Question How backup restore works?

[bulent]

Hello,
I was thinking how backup restore functionality is working. What I mean:
If I make a backup of the entire domain where I have files: A, B, C, D, E and after the backup X, Y, Z file is added to the domain folder. In some later time if I decide to restore the backup with ABCDE files, will everything after that backup will be removed (XYZ files) Is restore operation first removes everything from domain and then restores files from the archive?

 

[mr-wolf]

Yes it cleans everything and then rebuilds for the website.
I believe I noticed it doesn't do so for mail.

 

[Bitpalast]

That will need some testing, because I've seen the exact opposite. When we restore something for a customer we first manually remove the content of the document root directory and sub directories, because in some previous restores, existing files were overwritten, but additional files X, Y, Z were not deleted but left intact. Maybe there was a change from one version to another?

 

[mr-wolf]

It wouldn't surprise me if things were sometimes different. Plesk never used to mess with the filedates and at a certain time they did.
I believe they now sorted that problem (EDIT: no they didn't(. The behaviour I described I noticed on Onyx. Never did much restoring in the past.

Maybe I have some opportunity to confirm my thoughts on that tomorrow...

EDIT:

I wrote a special script for it, but that wasn't necessary as it didn't behave like I think it did.
Files that were added since the backup were not deleted and there was no rebuilding....
I tested it on 17.8.6
I thought I saw this rebuilding in the past and have taken that knowledge into account ever since...
A mistake so it now seems.

So.... One should remove folders before doing a restore if you really want to get rid of some stuff.
@Peter Debik answer is the correct one.

EDIT:

And it gets worse....
The restore bug is not fixed yet....
All the dates of the files have been changed to today's.... Grrrrrrrrrrrr....

155 Nov  3 00:13 test.php

Luckily I still have these files somewhere else with their original timestamp.
I did test on a folder of an obsolete website, but still....

PS

I may have seen this behaviour during a migration....

Would need to test for that, but I can remember losing a website because I used the migration tool to migrate the mail to another server where only the website of that same domain was running.

I wanted the mail and website for a specific domain back together again as LetsEncrypt needs a website to generate certificates for webmail. A mail-only site is not supported.That client was using webmail a lot and I wanted it to be secure. Mail and Website needed to be together on 1 server for that

I expected it to merge these 2 as I told the migration tool to only migrate the mail....
It did NOT merge. It destroyed the website on the target and this resulted in a lost website.

I then needed to restore the site by using the back-up tool.
This resulted in a filestructure with all filedates set to the moment of restoration.

That was indeed a day I was cursing on Plesk (and myself for assuming too much).

 

[bulent]

Yepp,
I made some tests also and the files after backup were there after restore operation.
Now another problem is bugging me. What is the situation with databases? If I have tables created after backup, will they remain after restore operation?
Also I think this with the files is not a good idea. If there is a virus script, it will remain there even after restore of previous archive.
I my opinion Plesk Team shoud consider backup/restore operation script.

 

[mr-wolf]

MySQL restore operations of a MySQLdump destroys the original data