plesk backup file

[ayteq]

hi all,

i have a big problem and have to solve it asap. 1 week ago i have backup my all web site. after that the hosting company deleted all my files. so i just got this backup file in my hand. a couple of day ago i have bought a windows hosting with php mysql support. there is no plesk or cpanel to upload the backup data. the only solution i think must be that to extract the backup file and reach all files. in many post i have seen that we can extract this backup file through winzip or winrar in windows environment.

my first file didnt have any extension and 500 mb sized. i thought that it must be PSA, and made it psa. soon i have exracted the file with winrar, and now i have 1 gb sized file with no extension again. what is this 1 gb sized file? i cannot extract it with any type of comprosser softwares. what should i do? how can i reach my files?

thnak you in advcance.

 

[JustJonno]

I don't know if you sorted this problem or not, but this may help others out as i found this post while looking for a solution myself.
Step by Step guide to extracting a Plesk Backup file using Windows.

Required Software:
------------------
Winrar from Rarlabs.com
Outlook Express (you could use any mail program that decrypts mime attachments really but for the sake of this How-to i'm going to assume Outlook Express)

Step1:
=====
Download your backup file from the server and place it in a folder somewhere (e.g. c:\backup)
Goto that folder and keep it open on the desktop (you'll need it in a few mins)
open Winrar and click Open and/or navigate to the folder you made (e.g. c:\Backup) and select the backup file you downloaded. You will see a single file in there thats compressed, just extract that file to the same folder as your backup. (don't worry about file names, normally there's a bit of a time delay from the making of the backup to the actual finished file so the filenames should be different.)
If Winrar doesn't see it as an archive then don't worry, its just that your backup is less than 100mb and it makes this much easier as you won't need to decompress it.

Step2:
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Open up Outlook Express and goto the welcome screen. next you need to bring up the folder with your backup and decompressed backup in.
Select the decompressed file and rename it to just the domain name WITHOUT the tld on the end. (e.g. example rather than example.com)
Drag and drop this file onto the Inbox icon in Outlook Express and wait a while. If you get the new mail window and its tried to attach it to a message, you need to trim your filename down and try again. Don't give up, with trial and error you'll start Outlook Express merging the file into itself.
Once outlook has finished, you'll see theres a mail message there with the dump.xml as the body. You WILL get an error message about headers but don't worry about that just click the OK button.
Next, select the attachments icon you'll see on the mail message and save all attachments somewhere. This will take a while, there's alot for it to do to sort them out.

Step3:
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Once you've got your attachments then you'll see the .httpdocs and .httpsdocs files, just append the file name with the extension .tar and Voila! your backed up site!
You'll also see in the folder some .mysql files, these are the database dumps that should import straight into phpmyadmin or some other mysql program.

Conclusion:
========
So far i've noticed that Outlook Express has an issue with the larger file size, you may want to try this with Outlook included with Office, or some other mail program if you have larger files, but for the smaller backups this should work.

Good Luck!!!
Jonno

 

[abubin]

thanks for this guide. Very useful.