UpdraftPlus uninstalls itself after backup

Hi Patrick,

UD has no code for de-installing itself (under whatever conditions). (Even in the “normal” case where you deinstall it, or any other plugin from the WP “Plugins” screen, it’s WP core that does that, not plugins themselves).

I was going to say “this is almost certainly the hosting company deciding that they don’t want you to perform your own backups”, but you say you’ve already checked that. So that is very mysterious. I’d suggest running a full virus scan of your site. If that turns up nothing, then for testing purposes, temporarily de-activate all other plugins, switch to a default theme, perform a backup, and then go to the “Plugins” page and see if it’s still there.

My guess, if I had to make one, would still be that it’s the hosting company and that the support rep you spoke to wasn’t aware of some policy.

David

Thanks David for the quick answer.

We’ll check again with our hosting service.

Patrick

Hi again,

I have 2 questions :

1. When reinstalling, we can see that our settings are preserved. we couldn’t find where they are stored.

2. After UpdraftPlus has disappeared, we get the following message :

L’extension updraftplus/updraftplus.php a été désactivée en raison d’une erreur : le fichier de l’extension n’existe pas

The updrafplus/updaraftplus.php plugin has been uninstalled because of an error : the extension file does not exist.

No idea from where this comes from.

Thanks.

The actual message in english is :

“The plugin updraftplus/updraftplus.php has been deactivated due to an error: Plugin file does not exist.”

Hi,

Sorry to bother you again but we are unable to fix this issue. We have checked again with our hosting service and they have assured us that nothing on their side could cause the updraftplus folder to disappear. The process is always the same :

– We have scheduled a daily backup to a Google Drive.
– The backup occurs without any problem and it is valid (all files are there)
– After the backup succeeded, the updraftplus folder disappears (after a while, we don’t know exactly when but it’s always after the backup – could be a coincidence, though).
– We then have to reinstall. The settings are still there. There’s no problem when reinstalling, no “folder already exists” message. The folder is really gone. The contents/updraft folder remains untouched.

We have checked the FTP access and changed the password. No problem detected.

We have no idea about what code could decide to wipe the updraftplus folder and for which reason.

I’m not saying that updraftplus is the culprit but any clue about this strange issue would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Patrick

Hi,

Back to this issue. We have investigated all the possible causes of this problem. To no avail. Every night, the Updraftplus folder is deleted. Our hosting service has scanned the site for possible viruses. They also assure us that other users are using UpdraftPlus without any problem. They have monitored the FTP accesses to our site. Nothing suspect. Also, even if it may happen that WP extensions are not compatible with others, I have never seen an extension deleting another one, targeting it specifically. I have spent a lot of time scanning the code of the other extensions we are using to see if one of them could reference UpdraftPlus. Nothing suspect.

We are working almost full time since a whole week on this issue and we have no real solution. Maybe the problem is due to the way we use UpdraftPlus (daily remote backup to a Google Drive – our site is based on Astra Pro + Elementor Pro) ? We can’t continue working this way (having to re-install UpdraftPlus everyday. The only way to keep things working is to set the whole updraftplus folder to read-only and to install possible updates manually.

So, our decision is to switch to the backup service provided by our hosting service and to abandon UpdraftPlus. It’s a pity because until now, it has always worked nicely.

Any idea about this very strange problem will be welcome.

Patrick

Hi,

If it is not with your host then might be a conflict with a plugin.
Have you tried deactivating all other plugins and then just leave UpdraftPlus active? Do you still get the same result?

Have you tried using a different hosting too? Do you still get the same result?

Thanks,
Bryle

Hi bcrodua,

> Have you tried deactivating all other plugins and then just leave UpdraftPlus active?

Ahem, we are using about 60 plugins. If the problem disappears when disabling all plugins, we’ll have to find out which one is the culprit. Since the folder deletion occurs only once every night, we might need up to 60 days to discover what plugin is causing this. Disabling a lot of plugins would totally modify the context of execution of this site.

Moreover, have you ever heard of a plugin causing the deletion of another one by targeting it specifically ? Plugins might be incompatible but I can’t imagine that a plugins could destroy another one. Most of the time they are not even aware of each other. This case, it’s not about something malfunctioning. It’s about the updraftplus folder being systematically deleted every night.

We’ll have to imagine another strategy, I’m afraid.

Patrick

Who is your hosting with, is it GoDaddy?

Our hosting service is WPServeur, a french company specializing in WordPress hosting.

Patrick

Do you have a mu-plugins directory?

> Do you have a mu-plugins directory?

Yes, we do have one. Excellent remark. There are only 2 files in this folder :

elementor-safe-mode.php
muwps.php (which has been added by our hosting service).

I’m currently examning the content of muwps.php because it activates many plugins specific to WPServeur. I’ll try to deactivate some of them.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by samoreen.

Hi,

Please consider this problem as fixed. The culprit was a garbage collecting routine implemented by the hosting service.

Sorry for the trouble.

Patrick

Hi

Thank you for letting us know the cause of the issue, it’s always really useful from our perspective and it’s great to hear that you have it sorted.