AWS Transport Errors
Hi. My backups have been running without issue for several years. In the last week or two I’ve started getting transport errors along the lines of
AmazonS3 xxxx Unable to send “/home2/backup/2025-11-11/accounts/xxxx.tar.gz” to destination “AmazonS3”
It’s only happening with one or two accounts out of 100, and for the most part, different ones each time. There doesn’t seem to be any further information and it seems pretty random. Any ideas where to begin to try and troubleshoot this? I have seen several posts here about similar issues with older releases of cPanel, but nothing current.
AlmaLinux v8.10.0 STANDARD standard cPanel Version 130.0.16
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Hey hey! Is there any other data in the cpbackup_transporter log? If it's relatively random, I'm wondering if something on the destination side is killing that connection in some way. I'm not sure what logs there may be on the Amazon side of things, but it would be worth a look to check there.
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cPRex
Thanks for pointing me to those logs. I looked at /usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup_transporter/cpbackup_transporter.1762678411.log which was one of the days in question. There doesn't seem to be any mention whatsoever for the two accounts that failed that night. I checked, and the backups themselves were successful and exist on my server. Is there some other log I should look at? cpBackup was aware that the transport failed, as I got an email notice, and they are not in the Amazon S3 bucket for that date. I had hoped the log I looked at might at least have an entry that the failed transport was tried, but there's nothing.
I'll go looking at Amazon now too, just in case. Its odd in it's seeming randomness :-)
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That's the only log that would have transport data on our side, so it's odd to me there isn't a mention of the accounts there. Let me know if you find anything on the Amazon side!
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That seemed odd to me too. I went to Amazon and with a little AI help realized there is no logging of these events by default. I setup a 'CloudTrail' and should get logging of events moving forward. Last nights backup and transport was fine. I'll see what happens with the next one and report back. Did I mention that I hate AWS ;-) ;-)
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Let me know!
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Same error here on sending to S3
The system encountered errors during transport of the backup files.
Transport Backup Label Message s3 cepes Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/ accounts/cepes.tar.gz” to destination “s3” s3 prima Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/ accounts/prima.tar.gz” to destination “s3” s3 root Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/ accounts/.master.meta” to destination “s3” Below is a preview of the attached log file.
Preview of transport errors log: Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/ accounts/cepes.tar.gz” to destination “s3”
Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/accounts/prima.tar.gz” to destination “s3”
Unable to send “/home/backup/2025-11-14/accounts/.master.meta” to destination “s3” This notice is the result of a request from “cpbackup”.The system generated this notice on Friday, November 14, 2025 at 2:34:27 AM UTC.
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verdon, have a search for this text in your cpbackup_transporter logs:
AuthorizationHeaderMalformed
If you find lines in your log containing that text and referencing a wrong region, you could be having the same issue we and other users of this forum have started seeing in recent weeks. We are on the same cPanel version as you.
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Yes
[2025-11-14 02:31:02 +0100] warn [cpbackup_transporter] Path creation failed: AuthorizationHeaderMalformed: The authorization header is malformed; the region 'us-east-1' is wrong; expecting 'eu-west-3'
How can we fix this?0 -
Hi Jaican
Hopefully this and the other thread gives cPRex a few data points to work with.
(I'm just a user like you - I came here from a search to see if anyone else started having the same trouble recently)
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I posted this in another thread about this, but this seems to be the core of the issue: https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360048582713-Some-S3-Compatible-services-use-a-custom-region-not-on-the-AWS-regions-list-causing-backup-validation-failures
Does that sound like what is happening here?
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Thanks for replying, cPRex. In our case, I'd probably say that that link isn't relevant. We're using S3 itself rather than an S3 compatible service - and we're using a normal, well-used region, not a custom one.
My thinking is that if I'd set something up wrongly at the S3 end it would fail on every account's backup, not just some of them (and the failures are on different accounts and different numbers of accounts each time - it really seems quite random). The only side of the equation that seems to have changed is cPanel and OS updates - I can't see anything from AWS to suggest that they have changed anything at their end. We've been seeing reliable backups to S3 for months if not years, until this issue started happening - with a similar timeline to others in the thread.
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Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to dig too much yet. I've been ill. Anyways, I’ll look for those sorts of log entries. My region is Canada-central, and I’m pretty sure that is in the main AWS list. It’s been a long time since I set it up.its been flawless until recently.
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I've also got this issue. I can't seem to validate my Amazon s3 either, it just hangs.
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Also had this issue since the 17th October.
Was usually a couple of accounts each day, but the past 3 days it has been many more accounts failing. Still random and not the same accounts each day.1 -
I just posted an update to this thread with more details, but our developers are looking into this now: https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/36235779497879--cpbackup-transporter-Path-creation-failed-AuthorizationHeaderMalformed-The-authorization-header-is-malformed-the-region?page=1#community_comment_36386375607319
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@web-nb
Yes. That is the case. I see lines like this from a couple nights ago. Since then I had a run that was 100% successful, and one account failed in last night's run.
[2025-11-06 02:43:39 -0500] warn [cpbackup_transporter] Path creation failed: AuthorizationHeaderMalformed: The authorization header is malformed; the region 'us-east-1' is wrong; expecting 'ca-central-1'
[2025-11-06 02:43:39 -0500] info [cpbackup_transporter] Validating destination path /2025-11-06/accounts/
[2025-11-06 02:44:42 -0500] info [cpbackup_transporter] Making Path /2025-11-06/accounts/
[2025-11-06 02:45:45 -0500] warn [cpbackup_transporter] Path creation failed: AuthorizationHeaderMalformed: The authorization header is malformed; the region 'us-east-1' is wrong; expecting 'ca-central-1'
[2025-11-06 02:45:45 -0500] info [cpbackup_transporter] Validating destination path /2025-11-06/accounts/
[2025-11-06 02:46:48 -0500] info [cpbackup_transporter] Making Path /2025-11-06/accounts/
[2025-11-06 02:47:51 -0500] warn [cpbackup_transporter] Path creation failed: AuthorizationHeaderMalformed: The authorization header is malformed; the region 'us-east-1' is wrong; expecting 'ca-central-1'
[2025-11-06 02:47:51 -0500] info [cpbackup_transporter] cpbackup_transporter - Processing next taskIt is random. It is not everynight. My AWS zone is ca-central-1
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Thanks verdon - it looks like a case number has been assigned for this issue in the other thread.
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I can also confirm the issue began around mid-October. It’s occurring on two different VPS servers running cPanel, hosted by separate vendors on different U.S. networks. There were zero issues with backups to AWS S3 prior to this.
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Correct - our team is working on this now and I'll post an update to that other thread with more details once it's resolved, but we're hoping to get that fixed before version 132 goes to Stable.
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