Greetings Moodlers,
I've been wrestling with a backup problem for a while, and have collected quite a bit of experimental data, and think I'm going to put in a ticket into tracker. The automated course backup simply does not seem to work consistently with course with more than 4 GB of files.
Here's the environment: Moodle 2.8., VPS dedicated server, running PHP 5.4, suPHP handler.
I have several courses that include MP3 files so that the total course size exceeds 4 GB. When automated backups run, one of the courses throws an error of "unfinished" in the BU log. The automated BU script leaves a lot of files in /moodledata/temp/backup, which if left to its own devices, will completely fill up the drive, for they system tries again and again to backup, and each time leaving gibabytes of temp files.
I have turned on the "experimental" setting for the new zip format, which provides for courses > 4GB.
I can run a manual course backup from the web interface within the course, and it executes without failure.
The automated script worked with the course last when the resulting zipped course file was 3.5 GB. It now fails when the file is 4.5 GB (that is the size generated by the manual course BU).
When I run the CLI automated backup script, it fails without any error, and leaves the same mess of temp files.
I have set the maximum amount of RAM for the BU and CRON process via the system settings. I have also dramatically increased the timeout settings in PHP.ini, so the bu script has time to execute a large BU.
Sine the manual course BU works, but the automated BU script fails, this seems to indicate a bug in the automated script, hence my inclination to file a ticket in tracker. But if any of you have a great idea of how to resolve the problem I'm all ears. In the interim I have to turn off automated backups and BU each course manually, which is not a viable long term solution. Perhaps one of you knows how to eliminate a single course from automated backups?
Thanks in advance,
John