Backup stalling on a particular file

Resolved jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 6 months ago

Hello,

I’ve been using UpdraftPlus for a while and it has been working fine until one day it just stopped working and stalled when backing up. I’ve started to exclude directories in the uploads and plugins directory try and narrow down the problem.

With the uploads directory I’ve been excluding each directory by month to try and pinpoint the problem file. Unfortunately, even if I can identify the month directory that is causing the issue, there’s still hundreds of image files in that directory. Are there any known restrictions on file lengths that might be causing an issue, or file sizes or anything else that UpdraftPlus might be hitting that causes it to just stall? There are no error messages in the log, I watch it backup and it goes quickly and then hits a certain file (doesn’t say where) and just stops.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get UpdraftPlus working again? Even within the directory I can only exclude files by beginning characters or filename. We only have png or jpg files, which kind of narrows it down, but not enough to be very accurate. And if I use the beginning character exclusion rule, we have filenames beginning with all different characters so this isn’t accurate either.

I’ve tried changing the archive size and changing it right down to 20mb but this has no effect.

Any help would be appreciated,

Thank you

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 26 total)

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Plugin Contributor bcrodua
(@bcrodua)

7 years, 6 months ago

Hi,

Please could you send us a copy of the latest backup log? This can be found in the UpdraftPlus Existing Backups tab.

The contents will be too long to post here directly, but you can use an online service such as Dropbox or Pastebin, and post the link here.

Best Wishes,
Bryle

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 6 months ago

Hi Bryle

Here is the paste where the backup stalled with no exclusions in place
https://pastebin.com/Zmkxbfz0 – it stalled somewhere inside the plugins directory

Here is a paste when I excluded the plugins directory
It stalled somewhere inside the uploads directory.
https://pastebin.com/diKU5WEK

Thanks

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi Bryle

Have you had a chance to look through the log files yet?

Thanks

Plugin Contributor DNutbourne
(@dnutbourne)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

Apologies for the delay.

From the logs, it appears that the backup is being timed out, which is expected.

However, the backup is not resumed later, as it should.
This suggests that there is a problem with your site’s scheduler.

Please could you install the free WP Crontrol plugin? Then, go to WP-Admin->Tools->Cron Events.

Are there any error or warning notices on that page?

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi

I have this plugin installed, there is an error up the top, please see below.

There was a problem spawning a call to the WP-Cron system on your site. This means WP-Cron events on your site may not work. The problem was:
Unexpected HTTP response code: 401

I am running IIS 10 with PHP and MySQL installed on a Windows 2012 R2 server.

We are also running an NTLM plugin to perform SSO functions so users automatically get logged in with their Active Directory usernames when logging on to the WordPress site.

Cron seems to have issues which I haven’t been able to resolve. However, this has never been a problem for UpdraftPlus which I used to run manually and it completed successfully.

Is it possible that an update to a newer version of UpdraftPlus relies more heavily on cron and now doesn’t work because I don’t have cron running successfully?

Thanks

Plugin Contributor DNutbourne
(@dnutbourne)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

Apologies for the delay.

What has probably happened is that the backups used to complete in a single run, but now require multiple resumptions (e.g. if the site has grown in size).

It appears that the request to the WordPress cron file is blocked due to a lack of authorisation.

You can try enabling the alternate WordPress Cron system (a backup system for cases such as this). To do so, add the following to your wp-config.php file:
define( 'ALTERNATE_WP_CRON', true );

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi DNutbourne,

Unfortunately putting this command in at the bottom of wp-config.php instantly breaks the site with a HTTP 500 error and the site does not load. When I comment it out, the site loads again,

Any ideas?

Thanks
Jaime

Plugin Contributor aporter
(@aporter)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

Are there any errors in your PHP error log?

Best Wishes,

Ashley

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hello,

Unfortunately there is nothing in the PHP error logs that references UpdraftPlus in the error log. There is just LDAP references to looking up domain users and then images and files being loaded when the site is served up to the user.

Thanks

Plugin Contributor DNutbourne
(@dnutbourne)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

Apologies for the delay.

Please could you place that line near the top of the wp-config.php file, above the line that says ‘Stop Editing’?

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hello,

Ok that seems to not be crashing the site and I’m testing some backups now and will let you know if it stalls again. I’ve taken all filters off and am backing up plugins, themes, uploads and database.

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hello

Please find a paste of the latest backup here. https://pastebin.com/rYBJGEhJ
It’s behaving very, very strangely now since I put that alternate cron line in.
This log above is after I’d unticked “backup database” but kept everything else, it appears to be trying to backup the plugins directly, then just fail.

Here’s the log when I tried to backup everything including the database, again it seems to fail for no reason but still say the backup completed successfully, but the logs show otherwise. https://pastebin.com/pYeVx0xC

In the first backup above there are no buttons under “Backup Data” to click – usually for a successful backup there would be Database, Themes, Uploads, Others.

In the second example there is just the database button, nothing else.

Please assist if you can!

Thank you

Plugin Contributor DNutbourne
(@dnutbourne)

7 years, 5 months ago

Hi,

The logs show that it is taking a very long time to write data to the backup files.
However, the backup is proceeding until it is timed out.

How long did you leave the backups to run? Does the site in question receive visitors?

Thread Starter jaimeklein
(@jaimeklein)

7 years, 4 months ago

Hello DNutborne

Sorry about the late reply. I leave the backup to run until it times out, I’ve left it all night sometimes and come back in the morning to find it stalled and the retry seconds counter at a huge number like 45673 or something.

The site does receive visitors, yes. Do you think it’s getting stuck on particular files?

It used to work absolutely flawlessly and was amazing. Since updating the program is now gettig stuck and not working at all. The infrastructure and server that it resides on have not changed. It’s still backing up to the local disk on the server.

Please advise the next steps to troubleshoot this issue. Shall I try disabling some settings, do you need more logs maybe?

Thanks

Plugin Author David Anderson / Team Updraft
(@davidanderson)

7 years, 4 months ago

We’d need to see a fresh log file to be able to know what the situation is now. A UD release since your last one (which pastebin.com has expired) did add some scheduling optimisations for very long-running backups. So, the best thing to do is start a fresh backup, leave it a while, then post the log, and we can take another look.

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