Veeam Agent - Linux Restore Files

This article will cover the steps to help restore files using the Veeam backup agent on your Linux server.

For this example, we have a subdirectory of the /root directory (/root/Examples) that contained some important files that were accidentally deleted:

The first step is to start the Veeam backup agent interface, by just running this command in your terminal/SSH client:

veeam

The agent interface will open and show you the server’s hostname at the top (this example server is called “veeam-agent-linux”).
As well the currently present backups and many options - for now only the “Recover Files” option applies - press the R key on your keyboard:

Here we choose the backups to use, normally you will only have the one option here apart from “Show all…” - press the Enter key on your keyboard.

The highlighted section will change to the right side of the screen where you can select the applicable restore point to use.
Press the Enter key on your keyboard again once you have the correct restore point highlighted.

The restore point you have selected will then start to mount:

Then soon after you should receive confirmation of the mount completion:

The backups are now mounted to your server,  present at the path: /mnt/backup/
You can use the “Esc” key at the top left of your keyboard to exit the Veeam backup agent.

Please Note: The copy commands below are only for this example, you will need to amend them to suit the paths for your backed up/live data.

Now to restore the backup it is only normal Linux copy commands.
To copy the files we need from the backups to the server’s live directory just ensure we are in the directory to restore to and then copy the files with this command:

cp /mnt/backup/root/Examples/* ./

Or if you wanted to specify the full path, like this:

cp /mnt/backup/root/Examples/* /root/Examples/

This is just like any other linux file copy, you can use flags such as -p to preserve attributes etc
If you have more than one set of files or directories to restore, you can run multiple copy commands until you have restored all data.

Once you have copied all of your data from the backups, it is important to unmount the backups.
Run the Veeam backup agent again.

veeam

You will see the option for “Recover Files” option is no longer present and replaced by “Unmount” - press the U key on your keyboard:

Checking back in the /root/Examples directory we can see all the files are again present: