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Online Backup for WordPress
[resolved] Online & Email Backups Fail (30 posts)

steve_dl
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

I have managed to get a manual download backup to work, but everything else seems to fail. Here is what I am seeing in the event logs:

For Manual Email option:
The backup failed: 2: fopen(/home/trailerc/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/tmp/full/cdrbuffer.php) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory

For Manual Online option:
The backup failed: The server failed to retrieve data from your blog. Please check your blog is not experiencing any network issues and try again later.

Any ideas on what is going on here? I have deactivated and deleted the plugin, and then reinstalled it to no success.

Thanks
Steve

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wponlinebackup/
Driskell
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi Steve,

We're working on a few minor tweaks to resolve the error you get in Manual Email. This should be ready in a couple weeks or so. Version 2.0.2 also did a few tweaks that made the error happen less often so make sure you are fully up to date.

For the Manual Online error, this is because the blog told the vault a backup was available, but the vault couldn't connect back to find it. The blog does need to be reachable on the internet for online backup to work.
If you email your vault username to support at backup-technology.co.uk we can look further to find what the problem was - there is normally an error logged on our side.

Regards,

Jason.
DaveMcK
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi - I'm having the same problem as Steve. The scheduled backups have stopped, and when I try manual backups - Online, Download, or Email - I get the same error message:

The backup failed to initialise: 2: fopen(/home/mckeegan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/tmp/full/backup.zip.enc.php) [<a href='function.fopen'>function.fopen</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory.

Deleted, reinstalled - same problem. Any ideas?
Driskell
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi DaveMcK,

Your error message is slightly different.

Can you login to FTP for your website, and browse to wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/ and tell me if there is a folder called "tmp" there, and also tell me if inside "tmp" there is another folder called "full"?

It's quite possible your issue is a permission issue and WordPress doesn't have the ability to write into the plugins folder.

Regards,

Jason.
Driskell
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi DaveMcK,

Thinking again you did manage to install the plugin... So probably not a permission thing lol. Check the folders are there anyway. And can you give me the full event log for the activity? (Click Activity Log and then View Events to view it.) It might give a bit more information.

Jason.
DaveMcK
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi Jason

I checked and the tmp and full folders weren't there!

I created them, each with 755 permissions, but I still got an error message.

The backup failed to initialise: 2: fopen(/home/mckeegan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/tmp/backup.data.php) [<a href='function.fopen'>function.fopen</a>]: failed to open stream: Permission denied.

So it might be permissions this time! What should they be?

Thanks for your help!

Dave
Driskell
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi Dave,

That is really strange. The plugin comes with a tmp folder in it already so there should be no reason for either of those to be missing.
When a full backup starts (during download and email backup) it tries to create the full directory - so this must be failing and then giving the No such file or directory error about the full directory. (I think we don't check for error when making directory - I'll put this on the timeline as that error would've been more helpful to us!)

Can you try 777 permissions on those folders? Some oddly setup servers need it like that.

Let me know how you get on.

Jason.
DaveMcK
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

I did:

chgrp -R 777 tmp

and it looks like the backup is working (54% as I speak). I'll wait till tomorrow to see if he scheduled backup is working as normal.

Doesn't seem like an ideal setup, security wise? But I'll be happy if it's all working again.

Thanks for your help, and for a great service.

Dave
Driskell
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

Hi Dave,
Great news! Least we now found the root cause.
But definitely, you are very right, not the ideal setup. 770 would be a bit better if that works. Best to contact your host about what setting you need to keep it secure as it can differ from host to host.
Jason.
DaveMcK
Member
Posted 10 months ago #

For the record - in case anyone is referencing this thread - that command I did was

chmod -R 777 tmp

NOT chgrp.

I tried 770, but the backup failed, so back to 777 for now.

D
steveportigal
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Same problem here.

The backup failed to initialise: 2: fopen(/home/BLAH/domains/BLAH.com/public_html/wp/wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/tmp/backup.data.php) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied.

There was no tmp directory, so I created that directory and the full subdirectory with my FTP client. The manual backup runs when permission is 777 but not at 770.

FYI, hope this is fixed; feels strange to be doing this the same day that I got hit with the index.php exploit!!
Driskell
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Hi,

There is nothing we do to fix this issue. We can only make the problem more clear and give more information on why it is there.

The problem lies with the host's poor infrastructure design. On such hosts it is almost certain they are using PHP versions that are more than 2 years old so they can utilise PHP Safe Mode to secure the server. If they aren't, then I wouldn't worry about the 777 as the server is already completely insecure.

PHP themselves have always recommended against using Safe Mode to resolve shared hosting security, and have completely removed the feature 2 years ago in PHP 5.3. If you host is not running PHP 5.3 or above it is more than likely because they rely on Safe Mode.
http://php.net/manual/en/features.safe-mode.php

Hope this information helps - but if your host's shared servers are setup this way I would advise to switch.

Jason.
DaveMcK
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

I don't think this is a safe_mode issue. My host (Positive Internet Co) is using php 5.2.9-0.dotdeb.1 with Apache 2.0 and safe_mode OFF - but I can't get the backup to work without 777 or 707 permission on the tmp directory.

For this reason, I have had to abandon this backup method. Those permissions are just asking for trouble.
Driskell
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Hi DaveMcK,

The issue isn't Safe Mode, the issue is the server configuration. Safe Mode is something that allows hosts to secure their server and get around the security problems that arise from running PHP under a single anonymous user (which means you need 777 permissions to write to your directories using PHP.)

As I have said though, if your server is NOT using Safe Mode, then it is already extremely insecure and your site is already highly vulnerable to all other users on that host. So in this case it is best to switch provider.

I'm afraid there is no way we can support such servers - there is no way we can do a secure backup if the server itself is not secure - so all I can do is offer advice. As I've said we'll be improving documentation etc soon so we can make people aware of all this.

Jason.
steveportigal
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

After I made the changes above, I scheduled a backup (database only) to run on Monday at 6am. The activity log shows it took 1 minute and 5 seconds and emailed me a 6.57M file. I didn't get the message and I don't see it in my Gmail spam folder.

So I just decided to do a manual backup and try the email option again.

It held at 60% for almost 20 minutes; it wasn't until I started looking at the activity log to write this post that it somehow finished. And in fact the email did arrive (although since the last time I used this, it's now an .RC file?)

So not sure about the scheduled email not arriving and the change in file format and the variable time to create a backup....thanks for your help!
Driskell
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Hi steveportigal,

The backup may have timed out a few times and when you went to activity log it just happened to get through the bit that caused the time out. Next version will speed up the timeout recovery so its much much quicker.

As for the RC extension, that shouldn't be there, you can just rename the file to remove it. This is sorted in next version too.

Not sure why you wouldn't have received the first file. All I can think is it got rejected somewhere, or WordPress's phpMailer failed to send it but didn't raise an error.

Jason.
steveportigal
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Thanks. I just tried the manual-email-backup option and I got the message, but my automated backup earlier this AM (one week after the last time) did not arrive (although the activity log does indeed show it being emailed as one of the steps). Any suggestions for troubleshooting this missing email?
Driskell
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Hi steveportigal,

We've seen issues with gmail before where it didn't like the ZIP file or the contents that is was getting sent, and so just refused to receive it. Not sure if it went to spam or anything but I got the impression it simply rejected the email.

Solutions we've found are encrypting the backup so gmail can't read it, and then by default trusts it. And also sending the email to a different email account.

So try encrypting the backup and failing that, try some other email addresses at different places. The only other problem could be file size, but the plugin will refuse to send anything over 50MB (the limit we see most often on email attachments) but some places do have very low attachment limits so it could reject something lower.

Jason.
steveportigal
Member
Posted 9 months ago #

Yes, today I got an error message from Gmail saying it was rejecting the attachment

SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com [74.125.127.27]: 552-5.7.0 Our system detected an illegal attachment on your message. Please
552-5.7.0 visit http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6590 to
552 5.7.0 review our attachment guidelines. m7si11599826wfe.24

That link says
Which file types can I not send or receive?

"ade", "adp", "bat", "chm", "cmd", "com", "cpl", "exe",
"hta", "ins", "isp", "jse", "lib", "mde", "msc", "msp",
"mst", "pif", "scr", "sct", "shb", "sys", "vb", "vbe",
"vbs", "vxd", "wsc", "wsf", "wsh"

Gmail won't accept these types of files even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz, .rar) format. If this type of message is sent to your Gmail address, it is bounced back to the sender automatically.
Jazzz1
Member
Posted 8 months ago #

For some reason I haven't been receiving email backups and correct email address has been confirmed.

Please advise, thanks.

Jazzz1
Driskell
Member
Posted 4 months ago #

Hi Jazzz,

If the backup is successfully sending the email, it may be getting caught in your spam filters, or your email provider may be rejecting it due to too large attachment or because it sees potentially dangerous file types inside the backup file (such as EXE, BAT, COM, CMD etc - see steveportigal's post above.)

Apart from the above I can't offer much more help if the backup says the email was sent.

Kind Regards,

Jason.
yearn2earncashdotcom
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

My manual download backups are fine, but the following error was returned after attempting a manual online backup.

"An online request failed: The server responded with status code 500 and error code 4103: The blog URL of your WordPress installation does not appear to be valid. Please note that this plugin will only work on public websites, and not within an intranet or home network. If you believe your blog URL is correct, please contact support."

This is probably due to the wordpress installation being in its own directory, rather than the root, and because of the way that 123-reg (my host) has the setup of wordpress installations from their free 123 apps so that they end up like "WHATEVER.com:/BLOG" rather than "WHATEVER.com/BLOG" if you are doing an installation in a directory instead of the root.

Does anyone know what can be done about this, or is the answer to find another plugin (or possibly go for an earlier version of the same plugin)?

Thanks,
Paul.
Driskell
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Hi yearn2earncachdotcom,

We'll fix this server side at some point. Should be done by the weekend.

Ideally 123-reg SHOULD be omitting the colon from the URL because the port specifier is empty. But it is not a MUST though. I think the server is looking at URLs using the old standards and not the new IETF STD 66.

Sorry for the issue. We'll post again when it's fixed.

Jason.
yearn2earncashdotcom
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

That was actually pretty amazing how quickly you got that next update working. I am pleased to let everyone that is using 123-reg as their hosts know that this plugin now works perfectly, and I will be posting the same on my blog as I know that there will be many people out there looking for a way to backup their wordpress blogs.

Thanks,
Paul.
Driskell
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Hi,

I did forget to post, sorry! Yes, the update is done.
Thanks for the feedback :-)

Jason.
macsam
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Hi

Great plugin. But I can not send filesystem backup, only database alone backup to my email. Everything else works pretty fine.
Regards
macsam
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

... and one other thing while I´m at it...:) In General Settings in your plugin-settings, it is possible to read ones encryption key!?!? What kind of a policy justifies this thinking? I´ve never before experienced a password that shows, most certainly not that a password/encryption key just stands there whole time, open to anyone with access to my dashboard to see it. Now you could argue: "...if someone gets to your dashboard, than the damage is done already..." but that just doesn´t quite seems to be true. I could wish to have several contributors to my website whom I rather would not want to be able to restore my backup for any given reason. Do you agree? And what can I/you do about this obvious security issue?

Once again, great plugin, mostly:) Thanx
Sincerely
Driskell
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Hi macsam,

It might be your file system backup is too big to send via email.
What errors do you get when you try?

The encryption key is not unlike a password, but at the same time it is a little different.
If you forget your password to your WordPress dashboard you can simply request a new one - it simply grants access and that password can easily be changed.

However, the encryption key does not grant access as such - it encrypts the data - and so can not easily be changed. If you forget what it is, there is no way to recover any data encrypted by that key. To change the key for some data you would need to first decrypt the data with the old key and then use the new one, so once lost any data encrypted with it is also lost. Because of this, we show the key on the General Settings so any users who forget the key can easily remind themselves of it.

Also, the encryption key alone will not give access to anything. It only allows somebody to read the data. So without access to your email inbox containing the encrypted backup files, it is meaningless. Also data stored online on our vault is protected by an access password you choose when you signup. This gives access to your data. Your key then gives you the ability to read that data. Since we do not have the key we cannot read your data even if we tried (we never would) so it adds perfect protection to your data even though we are holding it.

So we do not see this at all as a security issue.

The argument about having access to your dashboard - the damage is done already - is quite correct. Contributors do not have access to the plugin's dashboard - only Administrators do. And in the case of Administrators - the damage most certainly is already done - they just need to turn encryption off and run another backup.

Regards,

Jason.
macsam
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Ok. I see about the encrypt.key.

here´s the fail:
Failed to send an email containing the backup file.
Failed at: /customers/e/0/b/myywebsite.xx/httpd.www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wponlinebackup/include/email.php:101
PHPMailer: Could not instantiate mail function.
PHP: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated

How large can a filesystem be?
Driskell
Member
Posted 3 months ago #

Hi macsam,

Seems a problem with your WordPress is not able to send emails.
Our plugin simply passes control to WordPress to send the email, and the error is saying it could not instantiate the mail() function. So you may need to install an email plugin that changes WordPress so it uses SMTP or something instead of the mail() function. If you do have one setup, let us know and we'll have a look into it.

But if you respond, could you please open a new topic about it as this one is quite an old one and we've resurfaced it - the old participants will start getting emails lol!

Jason.