How do I migrate from legacy mode to agent mode?

Agent mode replaces the previous “cron + one-shot snaper backup” model with a long-running service that handles scheduling, browsing, and updates for you.

What changes

• Scheduling — you no longer pick an exact time. You pick a one-hour window on the dashboard, and Datashelter automatically assigns the precise minute inside that window to spread load across servers.
• No more crontabs — if automatic scheduling is enabled, the agent runs backups itself. You can remove the snaper entries from your crontab.
• Remote browsing — the agent maintains a remote index of your backups so you can browse files and databases directly from the dashboard.
• Automatic updates — the agent keeps Snaper up to date on its own when a new release is published.

How to migrate

Three commands, on the server you want to migrate:

snaper update
snaper agent install
snaper agent status

• snaper update makes sure you are on a version that ships the agent.
• snaper agent install registers the agent as a service (systemd or supervisord depending on your host) and starts it.
• snaper agent status confirms the service is running and shows a health snapshot (browse index state, queued/running tasks, last remote poll).

Once the agent is running, delete any leftover snaper crontab entries so backups only run once.