SiteGround SFTP Operations — Reference

SiteGround offers SFTP access (port 18765) but blocks SSH shell execution (exec_command in paramiko, any remote tar/rsync/find via SSH). Only pure SFTP operations work: listdir, stat, open, read, write.

Directory Layout

All sites live at /<domain>/<domain>/public_html — not /home/<domain>/public_html.

/815bistro.com/815bistro.com/
├── logs/
├── public_html/       ← site files (WordPress, etc.)
└── webstats/

Each domain has a subdirectory with the same domain name. Within that, public_html/ contains the actual website files.

Programmatic Backup to S3 (Wasabi)

When backing up all 21+ sites to S3 programmatically, the approach must use pure SFTP — no remote tar/rsync:

Correct Approach (Pure SFTP)

Connect via paramiko SSHClient → client.open_sftp()
Recursively list all files under /<domain>/<domain>/public_html using sftp.listdir_attr() + stat_module.S_ISDIR/S_ISREG
Collect a list of (full_path, relative_path) tuples
Build a local .tar.gz by reading each file via sftp.open(entry_path, "rb") and adding to tarfile.TarInfo
Upload to Wasabi S3 with aws s3 cp (via awscli venv)

What Does NOT Work

# ❌ SSH exec_command is blocked — "Channel closed" or "Timeout opening channel"
stdin, stdout, stderr = client.exec_command("tar czf - -C /path .")

# ❌ Remote rsync (requires SSH shell)
# ❌ Remote find | wc -l for file counting

What Does Work

# ✅ Pure SFTP recursive listing
import stat
all_files = []
dirs_to_check = [working_dir]
while dirs_to_check:
    current = dirs_to_check.pop()
    for entry in sftp.listdir_attr(current):
        entry_path = f"{current}/{entry.filename}"
        if stat.S_ISDIR(entry.st_mode):
            dirs_to_check.append(entry_path)
        elif stat.S_ISREG(entry.st_mode):
            all_files.append((entry_path, rel_path))

# ✅ Local tarball from SFTP streams
with tarfile.open(tar_path, "w:gz") as tar:
    for entry_path, rel_path in all_files:
        file_obj = sftp.open(entry_path, "rb")
        info = sftp.stat(entry_path)
        tarinfo = tarfile.TarInfo(name=rel_path)
        tarinfo.size = info.st_size
        tarinfo.mtime = info.st_mtime
        tarinfo.mode = info.st_mode & 0o777
        tar.addfile(tarinfo, file_obj)

Performance Note

The pure-SFTP approach is slow for large WordPress sites (1000s of files) because each file requires a separate SFTP round-trip. A full backup of 21 sites may take 30–60+ minutes. If an alternative method ever becomes available (e.g., SiteGround adds SSH shell), prefer remote tar streaming.

SFTP Connection Details

Parameter	Value
Host	`sftp.siteground.net`
Port	`18765`
Auth	SSH public key (RSA)
Key path	`/root/.ssh/siteground.key`

Manual Migration (When Moving Sites)

Files

# Full site download via SFTP CLI
sftp -P 18765 user@sftp.siteground.net
get -r /<domain>/<domain>/public_html ./backup-$(date +%F)

Or via lftp for large sites:

lftp -u user,password sftp://sftp.siteground.net:18765
mirror /<domain>/<domain>/public_html ./backup/

Database

Log into SiteGround cPanel → phpMyAdmin
Select the database → Export → Quick method
Download the .sql file
Import on new host: mysql -u user -p dbname < /tmp/database.sql

Installation on new host

WordPress files + database export are sufficient for a full migration
Update wp-config.php with new DB credentials
Search-replace old domain URL if changing
Import DB: mysql -u user -p dbname < /tmp/database.sql

Python Environment

On the infrastructure, paramiko and awscli live in /opt/awscli-venv/ — not system Python. Always run backup scripts with /opt/awscli-venv/bin/python3, not python3.

# Run backup
/opt/awscli-venv/bin/python3 /root/backup_sites.py

# Test connectivity
/opt/awscli-venv/bin/python3 -c "import paramiko; print('OK')"

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