Plesk Backup restores with a warning: Unable to create FTP account: The user jdoe already exists.

Symptoms

• Backup in Plesk is restored with the below warning:

  PLESK_ERROR: Warning: Restore hosting "example.com"
  Failed deployment of ftpuser jdoe (domain example.com)
  Warning:
  Execution of "C:\Program Files (x86)\Plesk\bin\ftpsubaccount.exe" --create jdoe -domain example.com -passwd "" -passwd_type sym -access_write true -access_read true -ignore-nonexistent-options failed with return code 1.
  Stderr is
  Unable to create FTP account: The user jdoe already exists.

• The domain's hosting type was switched from website hosting to no hosting and back.

• The user from the error exists in the sys_users table:

  C:\> plesk db "select * from sys_users where login like '%jdoe%'"
  +-----+---------------+---------+------------+--------------------------------------------+-------+-------+
  | id | serviceNodeId | login | account_id | home | shell | quota |
  +-----+---------------+---------+------------+--------------------------------------------+-------+-------+
  | 123 | 1 | jdoe | 1822 | C:/Inetpub/vhosts/example.com | | 0 |
  +-----+---------------+---------+------------+--------------------------------------------+-------+-------+

• No users with id 123 can be found in the hosting or ftp_users tables:

  C:\> plesk db "select * from ftp_users where sys_user_id=123"
  Empty output

  C:\> plesk db "select * from hosting where sys_user_id=123"
  Empty Output

Cause

Database inconsistency, an orphan record for the FTP user exist on the sys_users table.

Resolution

1. Connect to the server via RDP.

2. Create a backup of the psa database.

3. Open a Command prompt and execute the below command to remove the orphan user, where "jdoe" is replaced by the user from the restoration warning:

   C:\> plesk db "delete from sys_users where login='jdoe'"