Backups can fail for a few reasons. Here are the usual suspects.
Your Pterodactyl/Pelican client API key may have been revoked or regenerated. Pink Narwhal cannot access your server files without a valid key.
Fix: Go to Settings, update your API key, and unpause the affected server.
The server was deleted, transferred, or the panel URL changed. Pink Narwhal cannot find it anymore.
Fix: Check that the server still exists in your panel. If it was transferred or the panel URL changed, update your settings.
Your Pterodactyl/Pelican panel is down or unreachable. Pink Narwhal needs the panel's file API to download files.
Fix: Wait for your panel to come back online. The next scheduled backup will retry automatically.
You have hit your plan's storage cap. New backups cannot be stored until old ones expire.
Fix: Wait for older backups to expire, remove servers you no longer need, or upgrade your plan.
The server needs at least 50 MB of free disk space to create the compressed archive. If the server's disk is nearly full, compression will fail.
Fix: Free up disk space on your server, or remove files you no longer need.
Failed backups show a red status badge in the backups table. The overview page also highlights servers with failed backups in the attention section.
Enable Discord notifications for backup failures. Getting a ping when something goes wrong is better than finding out three days later.
If backups keep failing for the same server:
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