Support » Plugin: Solid Security – Password, Two Factor Authentication, and Brute Force Protection » Scheduled database backups giving random blank pages on sites

  • Resolved websanity

    (@websanity)


    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 0b

    I’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)

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Hi,

    Thanks for reporting this, and all of the information.

    Can you set WP_DEBUG to true and let me know if you see an error on the blank page?

    Is this the other backup plugin you have running? If it is I’ll do some testing with it.
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/

    Thanks,

    Gerroald

    Thread Starter websanity

    (@websanity)

    Hi there,

    Leave it with me. When I looked in the past the returned page was completely blank (but it did give a proper http response header), but I’ll turn debug on and see what comes up for you.

    Yes that it is the backup plugin (the free one). Both sites are setup with automatic weekly backup jobs using that plugin (just of the database and plugins). It has setting to schedule ” with WordPress cron”. A bit dumb having two backup systems but I backup to dropbox using Backwpup and that can sometimes be unreliable (i.e. not there).

    More on debug results shortly.

    G

    Thread Starter websanity

    (@websanity)

    I just tried on a complete new install with mostly the same components on one of the same hosts and I didn’t encounter the problem. All I can think is that it is something odd to do with the way CRON jobs are handled in those two accounts. One is on a host I have no intimate knowledge of, the other was imported via a cpanel import into the host which might have meant that CRON jobs were handled differently to their normal hosting.

    Sorry I can’t throw debug on, on either of the two sites: they’ve had enough down time as it is, and I’d need to break them then debug then get working again. I’ll keep any eye out for this and if I find anything I’ll get back in touch. In the meantime I’ll mark this as resolved. It isn’t. I just can’t see how to pin down the exact circumstances of this. If somebody else encounters this problem this might help for reference.

    Thanks.
    G

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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