A backup profile tells Pink Narwhal which files and directories to include when backing up your server. Instead of compressing everything (logs, caches, temporary files, that 3.4 GB asset bundle), it focuses on the files that actually matter.
Your world saves? Yes. Your plugin configs? Yes. That steamcmd folder? Absolutely not.
When you add a server, Pink Narwhal scans the files on disk and tries to figure out which game is running. If it recognizes the game, it assigns a Smart Profile automatically.
Smart Profiles are tuned per game. They know which folders contain your saves, which contain your configs, and which are full of binaries you can re-download in five minutes. They also know how to talk to your game server, which is how Checkpoint™ coordinates clean backups.
Currently supported games:
Each profile also detects variants. A Rust server running Oxide gets a different set of backup paths than one running Carbon or Vanilla.
If your game is not auto-detected, or you want to override the default paths, you build a custom profile. You get a live file browser, you check the folders you care about, you name it, and you are done.
Custom profiles work for anything. DayZ servers, Discord bots, websites, that weird Node.js project you run on a game panel for some reason. We do not judge.
Custom profiles still get Checkpoint™ integrity features (SHA256 verification, chunked backup support). They just do not get the automatic save coordination unless you have configured custom commands on your game profile.
Pink Narwhal checks for specific files on your server. It looks for things like server.properties (Minecraft), steam_appid.txt containing 252490 (Rust), or Server/HytaleServer.jar (Hytale). Each detection rule has a confidence level, and the highest-confidence match wins.
If auto-detection fails, nothing bad happens. You just get asked to build a custom profile. The folder browser makes this painless.
Was this article helpful?
On this page