[Plugin: BackWPup] Run away backup process!!!!! Don't use this plugin

@daniel Thanks for giving the so needed clarification. It would be really great to have a ticket system to file bugs and misbehavior of a plugin.

One problem when running a plugin on a shared hosting system is that you have very limited means to trouble shoot. What I did know and possible could gather I did mention in my initial report. I could not test it again cause that would have caused my hosting company closing my account permanently!

@all and Daniel

The plugin did some very unsafe things. Which got me and others there hosting services suspended. This is a very bad thing. Your blog is offline and you have t plead at your hosting company to reactivated it. And hope you are in time to disable the plugin before it overloads the shared server again.

Other people with non shared servers got there server totally clogged up by this plugin. Just read the thread.

If a developer gets these kinds of report it’s like a alarm bell. Just ignoring this alarm bell can have the consequences that you lose your credibility and that your software can get banned. This is a opensource community. If developers do not take responsibility for there software the community does. Software and developer behavior is assessed and acted on and the plugin is pulled from the repository

It’s really a good thing that this plugin was banned from the repository. The repository acts as a source of trusted software. No one can install a new copy of this plugin and get burned by runaway process, get banned from his hosting service etc, till the problems are sorted out. Maybe it is just one in a hundred, but that considering the consequences is still way to much, It’s not just a malfunction, it burns the blog owner very very badly, as it did me and others as you can read in this thread. Cause of this plugin I now have a bad reputation with my hosting company…. I am not happy at all that this happend, as others are that used this plugin.

@daveshire getting the point?

What became clear:
This plugin can be a time bomb for your blog. It’s not predictable in which situation it just does work and in which it burns all server resources.

Cause it can be a time bomb for you blog and the developer was not taking direct action on reports from different people how got there hosting service suspended, or there server clogged up by the plugin, it was pulled form the www.ads-software.com distribution platform. I applaud that action. This is how a opensource community works.

I also agree with MicroBert that Daniel’s behavior is extremely irresponsible. Not acting on these alarming reports actually is very, very irresponsible to your user base. This is nothing personal I expect Daniel to be a nice guy, but his, not acting on this major flaw tells me lot about his coding practices and coding ethics. I love the functionality of the plugin, it’s exactly what i am looking for. But I doubt the qualities of his coding work and coding ethics and I don’t like to depend on doubtful software for my backups. I sincerely hope that Daniel has learned from this story and adapts better coding practices and better coding ethics. Daniel you have some pretty good ideas about backups! If you really get things together and adapt save coding practices that makes it imposible for processes to endlessly recurse and burn server resources and make your code really, really save than your plugin will really rock.

I’ll keep watching this and other thread and watch how things wil develop for the coming months.

@mcBart:
You’ve repeated over and over. We have listened.

I don’t think that Daniel’s behavior was irresponsible or so – he took action and released the fixes desired by some users.

I don’t know what you want more???
Just wait for the new version releasing with WP 3.2

I think open source is not about deleting things quick but give a good platform to react and report. No one forces someone to use this or that. Just cool down, hehe ??

-dave.

@daveshire

You confuse opensoure software and a opensource platform here the WordPress plugin platform.

If you like to publish broken software on the internet on your own site fine.

If you commit software to a opensource platform you agree to there rules and customs of the platform maintainers. Runaway software that harms users and is not fixed asap should be banned is a good role.

The fix only came after severe pressure, Daniel first stated over and over that he wouldn’t fix. he came into action after huge pressure from one of the forum members and his plugin getting pulled from the repository.

After the fix the plugin is back

If you don’t like these minimum quality standard of the WordPress Opensources platform, please complain to Automatic they run the platform and the repository. You certainly will get a answer in the same line. “These minimum standards are to protect users and to set a minimum quality standard. Software that does not comply will be deleted from and readmitted after bug fixes.”

So it’s not about what you think, but it’s about a general minimum quality standard that is maintained for the sack of all users.

The fact that the plugin was pulled demonstrates that the platform maintainers agree with the users that got burned. You are of course entitled of your own opinion and are free to to express that on this forum. But be warned that others have a strong opposing opinion and probably will react. As I am in the opinion that you don’t get the big picture and the big point of what has happened. If it was just a bug that makes the plugin fail to work and the rest is fine, I possible would have agreed with you. The scoop of the problems where much bigger and not all were solved with a bug fix. Some for users important trust relations where damaged in the process.

And a last please don’t use the words “We have listened” with which you are implying that you are with a group in which you have consent about your opinion and want me to shut up. You are not a group, it is just you. It is just your opinion. Nothing less nothing more. And I am in the same way entitled in giving my opinion as you are. And I will keeping just right doing that.

@mcBart:
As I’ve said I used this “broken” plugin since July 2010 without any issues on nearly 30 projects on a lot of different projects/servers and I know a lot of people who do the same without any issues.
This plugin had nearly 60.000 downloads and only a few had these crucial issues.
If these rules (which are good I agree with you here) would assigned to all plugins here on the platform I assume that WP.org has to delete a lot of them (half of them?). Just IMHO. But nothing happens to a lot of rubbish here… There are other plugins here which make trouble – forum threads, author contacts – nothing. And WP.org also takes no action. So for me it’s two things I really cannot understand.
I will really encourage Daniel to make some “double hosting” here and maybe on his own site or anywhere else for these users that have no issues because I assume that after the release of v2.0 and after the first few problems WP.org will take it down again…
-dave.

@daveshine Talk with you when you burn yourself in a a way other users have burned themself with BackWpU. I think you will make a lot noise and blame a lot of people.

Only 1 i must say again:
See:
https://www.ads-software.com/search/wp-cron+w3+total+cache?forums=1
The Problems of multible Backups and hevay server load.
NOT MY PLUGIN!

and that the jobs run for a long time was only a Display thing not a real working!

and i have the extra work with problems that has nothind to do with my plugin Thank you!

Hi Daniel,

I think your conclusion is premature. I base this on the next facts

1) I didn’t and don’t have ever run a cache plugin on my blog. So there is no connection with W3 total cache in the incident I had had with BackWPup.

2) There is also no connection with cron with the incident. I had no cron job’s loaded from teh plugin

3) I started the backup process of your plugin manually. Within minutes the server was overloaded and my account got suspended by my hosting company. They tracked the overload to my account and processes on my account that did eat up all the server resources.

4) This has never happened before I used your plugin and has never happened after I ceased using it.

The fact is that something went terrible wrong and the above are really strong indicators that it was caused by BackWPup.

I think you are trying to blame others instead of helping users and investigating what happened, not a good thing to do as a developer….

I can recommend that you read the next article: https://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/plugins/the-definitive-check-list-for-publishing-your-wordpress-plugin/

Especially point 4, Testing your plugin first paragraph. Which is about fixing bugs that users find

And pelease stop shouting in your posts, it makes my ears hurt.

Hi mcBart,

i ever test my plugin, but i can’t test it on many hosts.
I spend the development many free time.
than i only read crying people articles. With no complete error massages.
I must spend houres too searsh bugs where nore are, or searsh bugs form a massage like “Thre is a bug, fix it” (no detetails).

I will make the follwing in future:
I will start a ticket system in google code where i can better hadel bug reports

it hurts me that i must read th i’m nothing do…..

Hi Daniel,

There are very critical bugs in your plugin, by which way too people got there hosting accounts suspended. As a software developer you bear at least the moral responsibility for what is happening to these people.

This next may sound harsh. It’s not to attack you, but to asses the situation you are in right now.

Reading your responses it looks like you, as a one person development team, are not anymore capable in dealing, with both, the software development and the responses / urgent requests fixing at least the most critical bug / misbehavior of the backup plugin .

To me it looks like this whole project is starting to growing above your head and you, as a one person development team, are not in able maintaing a decent quality standard, in both code and handling user feedback / bug fixing.

Maybe now is the time to team up with other developers and or to suspend the project. If you do neither the whole thing shall and will come crashing down on you sooner or later. I have seen this happening over and over again.

The consequences can be that your reputation as wordpress plugin developer gets damaged beyond repair and that you get band permanently from the wordpress developer community.

Please contemplate on this for a moment. The feature set for your plugin is really great and many people with self hosted wordpress blogs would like to have a stable plugin with this feature set. But with popping up reports of people that got suspended (some even more than once trying to deactivate the plugin) by using your plugin things are defiantly going down a very wrong way. Understand that only a fraction of the people with problems report them

Maybe the best course of action is to just pull back your plugin for now. Take time to reconsider, team up with other developers, take time to test and bullet-prove your plugin. Run it through a team of beta testers who can afford run away processes and when all is well, re-release the new version.

As a last note:

I am sorry that you have such a hard time now. But unfortunately these are the facts that you have to face. I hope that my suggestions will help you assessing your situation in the right way and that you will be able to make the right decisions which will steer you clear of all the problems you are facing right now. I hope that you’ll be able to find the right team of people to work with and re-relase a great and stable backup plugin every selfhosted WordPress blogger will love to use.

All the best, Bart