What happens to my backups and restores if my licence lapses?

The short answer

• Never blocked, in any licence state: restoring, downloading, browsing backups, the Disaster Recovery bundle and its restore, bw-extract, and the undo of a pre-restore safety copy.
• Nothing is ever deleted: no data and no backup point.
• When the licence is back (the next successful check-in, or activate), backups run again at their next schedule.

The timeline

1. Licensed. A valid lease. Everything works.
2. Grace (3 days). Starts when the lease runs out and the service cannot be reached, when the licence lapses or is suspended (for example an unpaid invoice), when the key is tied to another address or machine, or when a new server has not activated yet. Everything keeps working for 3 days. The console shows a warning banner: "Licence needs attention: backups would stop on <date>." The 3 days are one window for both causes. No updates are offered.
3. Unlicensed. After the 3 days, or at once if the key was revoked (a revoked key has no grace), or if the server has never reached the licence service and holds no licence. With enforcement on:
   • no new backup jobs;
   • scheduled and manual backups do not run;
   • migrations are refused on both servers, and clone links pause.

Banner wording

• Grace: a warning banner at the top of the admin console and the WHM or DirectAdmin admin plugin.
• Unlicensed: an error banner: "BackupWall is unlicensed. With licence enforcement on, backups, new jobs and migrations stop; restore and download still work."
• The cPanel end-user plugin never shows the banner.

In the beta

Enforcement is off. A missing key, a lapsed licence or an unreachable licence service shows the banner and logs licensing.would_refuse, and stops no backup, job or migration. A server with no key, or one that has not reached the licence service yet (for example outbound port 443 is blocked), shows a banner after the install: Unlicensed until it first reaches the service, then Grace for up to 3 days. Add the key or open the port.

The clock matters

A lease stamped in the future (a clock that jumped forward) puts the server in Grace. Turning the clock back does not give back time: BackupWall keeps its own running-time record. Keep time sync (chronyc tracking or timedatectl) correct.

Get out of Grace or Unlicensed

1. Read the reason with python -m app.licensing status (see How licensing works).
2. Fix the cause: activate the key, open outbound 443 to hub.backupwall.com, or move the licence, or settle the invoice.
3. Wait for the next check-in (every 6 hours) or run python -m app.licensing check-in.