error retrieving the JSON data ; parsererror

Could be a timeout, did you try clicking the retry link? Otherwise, try and exclude some of the larger folders and see if it helps!

Ovidiu

Thank you for the quick reply Ovidiu! I will try the retry link and also try to exclude folders. And than I try later manually copy/paste the folders.
I will respond later what happened.

Hi Ovidiu, I tried retry link but same message.
Also tried to exclude different directories (for test wp-content or wp-includes) and I tried to exclude different tables (like nextgen or others) but still same error.
So now I don’t know what to do.

Could there be a problem at the hosting provider site?

And the message “unexpected character” I think it has to do with indeed a strange character?

Thank you.

Feel free to contact me here https://www.xcloner.com/contact/ and send me the site admin details to have a look

Ovidiu

Thanks very much for your help Ovidiu! With your help it solved the problem and it works perfect ??

For others seeing this, the issue was caused by the “WordPress Database Backup” plugin which was throwing an error for some reason.

Ovidiu, you wrote:

“For others seeing this, the issue was caused by the “WordPress Database Backup” plugin which was throwing an error for some reason.”

That’s nice, but the rest of us don’t know what was said between you and Damiaan, or how the problem with the plugin was resolved.

Would you please explain more clearly what had to be done?

Thanks!

Hi @wordweaver777.
For what I know, deactivate and remove the WP-DB-backup plug-in solved the error.

Thanks Damiaan, but that does not appear to be my problem. I just checked my plug-ins page, and I do not have that particular plug-in installed.

As I told Ovidiu, I can perform a manual backup.

My problem is that for some reason, my automatic backups have stopped working.

I am sure that it has something to do with my settings on the cron tab in XCloner. I set that up so long ago that I don’t even remember how I did it now.

When I click on the “execute cron” link on the cron tab, I get this error:

To run this script you need to create a custom config file inside XCloner Config, and call the script using php cli command like this:

php /Applications/MySite/Blog/wp-content/plugins/xcloner-backup-and-restore/cloner.cron.php mycustomconfig.php

I am clueless regarding how to create a custom config file, as well as how to call the script using the php command line interface.

As I said, I am sure I set up properly years ago, but I don’t remember how I did it.

So for now, I guess I am stuck with remembering to do occasional manual backups.

Thank you Ovidiu.

Disabling wp-db-backup instantly resolved the issue.

Same here. Disabling/Uninstalling wp-db-backup resolved the issue.
Thank you Ovidiu.

Hi, it seems I have the same problem: I keep getting an error message

JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data

JSON url: admin-ajax.php?action=json_return&option=com_cloner&task=refresh&json=1&startf=8500&lines=9821&backup=backup_2014-09-20_10-35_sitename.de-sql-nodrop.tar&excl_manual=

I do not have the WP DB Backup plugin so I cannot deactivate it. Any other idea that could help me? (The plugin used to work fine for quite a while. I can’t determine the point when the error came up though.)

@sficht, strange but on another website I got same error when I was using Firefox (my favorite browser) but using Chrome it did not! In that specific case wp-db-backup was not the culprit.
Maybe this can help you?

Hi Damiaan, thank you for the hint. I am indeed using Firefox, so I tried IE instead and got very similar error message:

Details: parsererror — SyntaxError: Invalid character

JSON url: admin-ajax.php?action=json_return&option=com_cloner&task=refresh&json=1&startf=8700&lines=10007&backup=backup_2014-09-22_04-25_sitename.de-sql-nodrop.tar&excl_manual=

Will try Chrome later on but I don’t think that the browser is the reason in my case. Thank you anyway!

Hi @sficht, I find it also strange the browser would be the issue. Maybe I had luck that the second time the import worked and I connected it in my head due to a different browser ?? But try, you never know.

Did you also try to disable some plug-ins if that would be the cause?