I’m rebuilding my Hestia server, and trying to pull the backup from my old server onto the new server. However I ran into a couple issues.
First when I try to create a new admin user under my matching name from the old server, I get ‘user exists’ but it doesn’t really; my ubuntu login name is the same, but they shouldn’t cross.
So I did the same name with the first letter capitalized, but when restoring the backup, it does not restore properly.
1 Like
v-restore-user newuser user.backup.tar will restore the use that doesn’t exists yet. It Is a security feature to prevent users that allready exist outside Hestia that will overwritten by Hestia
That’s how I ran it, however it created files but not a user in Hestia, and none of what I restored shows up.
When I try restoring it under the new name, I get the ‘website is owned by someone else’ error. So I’m super confused
Edit: Tried again; tried to restore, got ‘user already exists’. tried to delete user’ user doesn’t exist"… so freaking confused.
And I’ve been using Hestia for about 5 years now…so I’m a little lost.
Edit 2: I think I figured it out. Not sure what was going on, but I think I finally figured it out.
Users created outside Hestia can’t be created in Hestia for this reason the only method is to delete first that user user userdel
I was able to get it figured out, the only issue I’m facing now is SSL related issues on my emails to my iPhone.
I think you have to turn on the SSL in the mail section of the domain.
Go to: user > Mail > edit mail domain > Enable SSL for this domain.
I encountered a similar issue while rebuilding my Hestia server. To resolve the “user exists” error, check if the user already exists with sudo v-list-users. If it does, delete it using sudo v-delete-user <username>. Create a new admin user with a slightly different name using sudo v-add-user newusername password email, then restore the backup to this new user with sudo v-backup-restore newusername /backup/path/backupfile.tar. Ensure correct file ownership with sudo chown -R newusername:newusername /home/newusername. Checking the HestiaCP logs (sudo tail -f /var/log/hestia/error.log) might also provide more insights. Hope this helps! 
- You can have an existing user in Ubuntu and create the same username in Hestia
- This is not a bug this 100% fully intended for a security reason