Backup 'Continue' button vanished

Backup 'Continue' button vanished

by Bex Ferriday -
Number of replies: 2

Here’s an odd one:

I’m currently migrating courses from a 1.9 Moodle site to a 2.3.  I’ve almost finished but suddenly, I can no longer make backups of courses.  This screen shot shows a course midway through the backup procedure. There should be a Continue button at the bottom of the screen, but as you can see, it's gone!  I've tried with different browsers and the same thing happens.  Refreshing the screen doesn't work either. As I'm part way through migrating courses, I'm perplexed as to why this should suddenly happen.  Anyone else had any similar issues, and if so, what did you do to fix it?

Thanks folks!

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In reply to Bex Ferriday

Re: Backup 'Continue' button vanished

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Just to follow up ... we haven't heard if any of the information on the FAQ document has solved your issue.  I have had and still do have similar issue (but have 'findings').

There are two notifications beyond the 'zipping backup'.

Copying zip file
Cleaning temp data

The entire routine should show:

Name:    backup-gdocs-20130107-2138.zip

    Creating temporary structures
    Deleting old data
    Creating XML file
        Writing header
        Writing general info
        Writing course data
            Course info
            Blocks
            Sections
        Writing users info
        Writing categories and questions
        Writing scales info
        Writing groups info
        Writing groupings info
        Writing groupings-groups info
        Writing events info
        Writing gradebook info
        Writing modules info
            Forums
            Journals
            Labels
            Quizzes
            Resources
        Course format data
    Copying course files
    Copying site files used in course
    Zipping backup
    Copying zip file
    Cleaning temp data

Backup completed successfully

The FAQ referenced:
http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Backup_and_restore_FAQ

Backup stops at Zipping backup

Moodle 1.9 and lower use a PHP library to zip files that isn't very efficient and struggles to zip/unzip large files. You can use an external Zip binary to use a different process to handle your files - you can set this in Admin > Server > System Paths Moodle 2.0 uses new PHP zip functions so that specifying an external Zip binary isn't necessary see System_paths#Path_to_zip for help configuring an external zip binary.

Doesn't mention an issue with backups when the size of the backup is too large for the zip file to be copied to the moodledata/courseID#folder/ or, if doing backups to other location.

In investigation of this on a CentOS server, it has to do with a limitation in the operating system - only way to fix is to re-compile the kernel with needed supports.  Uhhh, too much for me, but …

If one checks the /moodledata/temp/backup/ directory one might see the backup-blah-blah-blah.zip file actually does exist … and it is a complete (good) backup.  All one needs to do is manually move the file (notice there is a difference between 'move' and 'copy') to a location for archiving OR for downloading (could be to a courseID folder in /moodledata or one could temporarily move it to document root, download, then delete from document root.

The FAQ does mention (and it's a good idea to do this on failed backups) that it is safe to remove the contents of moodledata/temp/backup/ folder.  The last step in the routine is to do exactly that.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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