I'm getting an error before the login page even displays. The error is:
error/generalexceptionmessage
My research has found nothing to address this issue. I've manually added the lines in config.php to turn on debugging and see no errors on the screen or in the error.log file.
Here are the details of the environment:
Unix hosted environment (hostgator.com)
Moodle 3.82
PHP 7.4
MySQL 5.6.41
I've been working with my hosting service support for 72 hours and they are useless! Any ideas?
See if you can go directly to the setting for automated backups:
https://yoursite/admin/settings.php?section=automated
If you can set Active to disabled.
Manually remove all files/folders in your moodledata/temp/backup directory.
Do not turn auto backups on again until you find a hosting site that can handle.
If that doesn't work, the only alternative for turning off is to edit database for your moodle directly to turn it off ... not recommended, but ...
table: mdl_plugins_config
name: backup_auto_active
select * from mdl_config_plugins where name like 'backup_auto_active';
should show:
+----+--------+--------------------+-------+
| id | plugin | name | value |
+----+--------+--------------------+-------+
| 72 | backup | backup_auto_active | 1 |
+----+--------+--------------------+-------+
Set 'value' to '0' - which means off ... shouldn't run.
'SoS', Ken
moodledata/temp/backup/ is the build area for making course backups. If auto is turned off, could mean a backlog of backups that didn't complete and everytime cron job runs it seeds backups to be made. But, the solution is not to stop running cron ... that's *needed* to clean up stuff.
Also, your browser probably has cookies and is also caching ... just like server is caching.
So time to get nasty ...
Until you get done with the following list, do not attempt to login:
1. in your browser, delete cookies and cache for your site.
2. on your server, delete the contents of the moodledata/cache/ directory (safe to do, Moodle will rebuild as it needs)
3. restart apache service
4. watch the moodledata/temp/backup/ folder ... if it starts to populate does it fail leaving a directory with a long name consisting of letters and numbers?
Change into one of those using shared hosting file browser (ugh! much easier from command line) ... and see if there is a backup.mbz file there. If it is, it means the backup did finish and moodle is trying to do the very last thing in backup process which is to copy ... note I say copy .. to the configuration destination directory for course backups ... if you didn't manually create that destination directory, it's trying to copy the backup.mbz file to the sea of files in moodledata/filedir/ and that is no fun figuring that out.
So as your server creates the backups but can't do last step, use file browser in your shared hosted cPanel and manually remove folders/files ... continually ... what that area and if one appears remove it. Until you see none being created.
Also, in whatever tool you have to look at tables in the DB ... there is a table called "mdl_backup_courses" ... it's the 'road map' for backups. Contains:
+---------------+------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------------+------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | bigint(10) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| courseid | bigint(10) | NO | UNI | 0 | |
| laststarttime | bigint(10) | NO | | 0 | |
| lastendtime | bigint(10) | NO | | 0 | |
| laststatus | varchar(1) | NO | | 5 | |
| nextstarttime | bigint(10) | NO | | 0 |
Truncate that table ... that means remove data contained therein ** but not the table**.
mysql> truncate mdl_backup_courses;
mysql> select * from mdl_backup_courses;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
With auto shut off, table truncated, cron should run without trying to catch up.
And ... fingers crossed, you can login.
You might be moving off of shared hosting sooner than you planned.
Am out of ideas now.
One more question ... I take it that you are the only teacher in this moodle and there are no other teachers that could be making backups of their own courses. That right?
Now am really out of ideas! :|
Cept one .... move your site in same hosting from shared to either managed or unmanaged VPS hosting. With 'managed' VPS now the help desk is diretly involved cause managed means they do the 'heavy lifting' ... and can (should be able to) fix this for you.
'SoS', Ken
Autobackups ... is set to 'manual'?
IF so, that means another cron job could be created to run the cli script for autobackups in code/admin/cli/
The fact that there is a backup.mbz file there in the hashnamed directory means your server could NOT copy ... note I said copy ... the backup.mbz file and rename it to the destination directory. If you didn't use 'designated' in config of autobackups, backups are being saved to moodledata/filedir/ ... somewhere.
The controllers table is used on every course backup. Not really useful for what we seek.
The table I told you to truncate is the one that holds the scheduling of autobackups. *truncate that table*
'SoS', Ken
For further information I did a little debugging on my own by adding some 'echo' statements to the php files starting at the index.php. What I determined is it is failing on a 'require' statement so now have the hosting service looking for PHP issues. This same php file works just fine on another Moodle site.
What I'm wondering is, can I create a new Moodle install under a different domain. Then use the data directory and database from this install with the new one and at least recover some of the course curriculum I've built?
