Scheduled database backups giving random blank pages on sites
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In admin and front end, 9 pages in, say, 10 work, then you just get a blank page. I thought problem was with the host, then the database (because such non-deterministic behaviour doesn’t strike me as being a normal plugin coding issue), but finally I got to start turning off plugins. Turning off iThemes security stopped the problem. Wow! I thought maybe it was a load issue, who knows, the client was just happy the site was working again and so I moved on.
Today I updated another site and tweaked it’s security settings in iThemes security and it started exhibiting exactly the same problem: random blank pages. I’d only changed a couple of settings, so I turned them back the way they were. Still failed.
But I’d ALSO turned on scheduled DB backups (daily) in iThemes security. I tried to do a backup by hand but it said there was already a process backing up – huh?! No there wasn’t. I thought maybe the backup path was wrong so I browsed to that directory and saw a bunch of backup files. Lots of them. I happened to leave that on screen and then went about trying to get the site to fail and it did – then another backup appeared in the backup folder. Then I browsed the site, all was OK, then it failed, and another backup file appeared in the backup folder.
So I turned the automated backups off – now no problem no blank pages (and no new extra backups!)
And now I can run backups by hand (from backups tab)
It’s like the scheduled backup job is running amok – running constantly and therefore upsetting the ability to deliver web pages.
I don’t think any special CRON settings are in place (the above appears to imply the backup job is triggering on almost every page view), but it strikes me that there is a serious underlying problem in certain circumstances (this is across 2 sites developed by two different developers and 2 different hosts)
NOTE: Interestingly the automated backups don’t ever seem to have completed. I see 2 files for each one, like:
xxx.sql size 16,000kb
xxx.zip size 0bI’m turning off all scheduled database backups from iThemes security across all my sites – this is a MAJOR bug as this renders the site useless. If I can provide any further information that can help the developers fix then please just let me know.
PS. I think BetterWPBackup plugin is setup for both these sites and doing auto backups (in case there is some kind of conflict there)
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