Database backups stop updating without warning

  • Resolved jimmycrackedcorn

    (@jimmycrackedcorn)


    9 years ago

    I was taking a close look at my backups of about 40 WordPress sites during the past week and I found that in many of them, UpdraftPlus had stopped making new daily backups at some point.

    I am using the free version of UpdraftPlus, and I keep it updated daily to the newest version on every site.

    I use only the database backup feature, creating a once daily .gz of my mySQL export .db txt files.

    This is continuing to work fine on many sites, without a problem. But I discovered that on about half of the sites I checked yesterday, this free program had stopped doing what I asked it to do at some point in the past.

    On several sites, I had months-old backup files and no current ones, even though the plugin was installed correctly, updated always, activated, and had previously been working.

    To fix it, all I had to do was to click the “Backup Now” button and generate a new backup. This seems to have kick started the program into working again.

    I would love to get to the bottom of this, and I think I can help with the full site backups that I have downloaded. Please let me know if you want to know more.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/updraftplus/

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Contributor DNutbourne

    (@dnutbourne)

    Hi,

    This sounds like your WordPress Scheduler is somehow broken. Were the backups unfinished, or did they never start in the first place?

    You can check your WordPress scheduler using the WP Crontrol plugin. After installing this, go to Tools->Crontrol. Are there any error messages? Can you see UpdraftPlus tasks scheduled?

    Plugin Contributor DNutbourne

    (@dnutbourne)

    P.S.

    Any log files that you have will be useful.They will be too long to post here, but you can use an online tool such as https://pastebin.com/, and post the link here.

    Thread Starter jimmycrackedcorn

    (@jimmycrackedcorn)

    I’ll install WP Crontrol plugin on a dozen sites and then wait to see if this recurs. I’m not seeing any error messages right now because I have seemingly kickstarted your plugin to work again by resaving the settings. Was this a known problem that was fixed with one of your many updates over the last 5 months?

    I do see several log files that are 1KB instead of 16KB on a few installs. I’ll post some of them to a pastebin to see if you can glean anything from them.

    Thread Starter jimmycrackedcorn

    (@jimmycrackedcorn)

    Ok folks, I have a pastebin link for you:

    https://pastebin.com/L5RDV9Ty

    Plugin Contributor DNutbourne

    (@dnutbourne)

    Hi,

    Those logs are from duplicate backups that tried to start while another backup was already running. This could be caused by the server being overloaded, so the WordPress scheduler was not working correctly.

    It would appear that the scheduler at some point lost the UpdraftPlus scheduled backup task. Now that you have re-saved the settings, a fresh task has been scheduled. The cause for losing the task could be the same overloading that was triggering the extra backups.

    I would suggest monitoring the backups for a while, to see if the situation has resolved itself. It may be that the server is not under such a load any more.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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