Backups incomplete, but no errors in logs

  • Resolved Phil McKerracher

    (@phil-mckerracher)


    4 years, 1 month ago

    A site configured to backup to Google Drive daily using UpdraftPlus appeared to be working fine – no errors in the logs, backups about the right size, plenty of free space on both the local server and the backup account.

    However, when I tried to restore a backup (just the plugin files) I got a warning that the zip file size was different to the expected size – slightly larger, in fact. I allowed it to continue and it simply wiped all my plugins! It created a plugins.old folder but that folder is empty.

    The server is a VPS running Ubuntu 18.04, PHP 7.4, latest WordPress, all fully updated and no relevant errors in logs that I can see. The PHP timeout on the site was set to 60s, RAM limit 256 MB.

    So, I tried to download the zipped backup file directly from Google Drive and unzip it on the server. Chrome wouldn’t let me download it for some reason (no error message, just didn’t do anything) but Edge let me download it and I then unzipped it on the server and at first sight it succeeded, but I subsequently found several files and folders missing.

    This is scary. I managed to restore all the files from a different backup but these silent failures really spook me. I daren’t risk testing the UpdraftPlus restoral on other sites because it might wipe all my files, as this one did. I can’t trust it now.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Contributor bcrodua

    (@bcrodua)

    Hi,

    To help us work out the cause of your problem, can you please send us a copy of the restoration log? I will ask one of our developers to check.
    You can find this log in the ‘wp-content/updraft’ directory of your site via FTP.
    You can send the log file and copy the contents into an online tool (such as https://pastebin.com/ )

    Regards,
    Bryle

    Thread Starter Phil McKerracher

    (@phil-mckerracher)

    Thanks for your offer of help. Log files of two failed restore attempts here:
    https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ACuAoBwZZ9kGD38&id=ACE88F444BB89CFC%211207452&cid=ACE88F444BB89CFC

    Plugin Contributor bcrodua

    (@bcrodua)

    Hi,

    It appears that the restoration process has been timed out or being killed off while restoring the plugins.zip.

    Please could you ask your hosts/server admin and have them check the PHP error logs. These logs should contain a record of the exact information as to why the process could not complete.

    Kind Regards,
    Bryle

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by bcrodua.
    Thread Starter Phil McKerracher

    (@phil-mckerracher)

    I am the server (VSP) admin and I’ve checked the PHP logs and found nothing (on either backup or restore operations, even with full debug enabled). I’ve also checked other logs including Apache logs and mysql logs.

    I am NOT seeing any evidence of timeouts. I’ve tried increasing them just in case, but it makes no difference.

    As far as I can tell this problem started happening in mid-June. I’m backing up to various Google Drive accounts. It’s reproducible on all my sites.

    A typical error message on attempted restoral is:

    File (backup_2020-09-23-0045_SnugToes_265a0a8b880d-themes.zip) was found, but has a different size (7523674) from what was expected (5858990) – it may be corrupt.

    Thread Starter Phil McKerracher

    (@phil-mckerracher)

    Update: I’ve just tried restoring some UpdraftPlus backups for a site on a completely different server. Only two out of about 30 restored successfully. So the problem goes back further than June, I think. If I try downloading the files manually and unzipping them on a PC they typically report “zip file corrupt”.

    Plugin Contributor DNutbourne

    (@dnutbourne)

    Hi,

    Please could you test taking a backup and not sending it to Google Drive?
    Are you able to download and unzip those backup files?

    Thread Starter Phil McKerracher

    (@phil-mckerracher)

    Yes, I did a quick test and backups seem to be OK if they don’t go via Google Drive. Note though that the problem is intermittent so I can’t be 100% sure. Google Drive backups do sometimes succeed but fail more often than not for me, so it’s reproducible in that sense.

    I’m afraid I’ve now uninstalled UpdraftPlus from all the sites I manage, because of the risk of customers trying to restore corrupt backups and messing up their sites, and because I have other (more comprehensive but less convenient) backups running anyway. So from my point of view no further action is necessary and I’ll mark this “resolved”, but I’m sure other users might still appreciate a solution.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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