Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Brian Johnson -
Number of replies: 12

Hi everybody, I've got a backup problem I can't nail down on a fresh 1.6 box and one that was upgraded from 1.5-->1.6. 

When I schedule a backup of my courses, the zip files are created just fine, and when I unzip one and look at the moodle.xml, it does NOT include my forum categories or posts!  I have it setup as:

Include Modules: Yes, wish user data
Metacourse: Yes
Users: Course
Logs: No
User Files: Yes
Course files: Yes
Messages: Yes
Keep: 5 files

But if I go in as admin, go into the specific course, and kick off a backup THAT way, the moodle.xml DOES have all my course content and I can import it every day of the week and twice on Sunday!

This seems like such a basic thing to NOT be working! What in the unholy name of flaming farts is going on here!  I'd LOVE some help.  Thanks!

Brian

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In reply to Brian Johnson

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Juan Marín -
I couldn't help you, Brian. But I add my question to your post. I have realiced that automatic backup files are smaller than the manual backup files. The same course occupies 170 Kb in automatic backup but 2.5 Mb in manual backup... If I restore the automatic backup file the curse contains only the structure but no contents (the manual backup recover the course perfectly).
In this way the automatic backup are totally unuseful.
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In reply to Juan Marín

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Mike Strong -
I noticed this size difference phenomenon also.  
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In reply to Brian Johnson

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Juan Marín -
And Now???
Is Automatic Backup pocedure working well for most users? In this case, Why in some cases (me included) the automatic backup only save the 'course structure' but not all the "contents"?
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In reply to Brian Johnson

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Kenny Backus -
I'm getting the exact same issues. This is pretty alarming because I've been backing up for awhile with the assumption that all of my backups were good... now I don't really have any good backups of my courses because all the automatic ones are bad! Thankfully, we're currently between semesters so people aren't going to screw up their courses and ask for backups.

This might help some people with really huge sites. An execution time of "3000" will only let the backup script run for 50 minutes until PHP kills it. For my site, it seems that it only takes about 15 minutes to make a full backup, but I've made the change just in case it might help.

edit: This bug / feature request might be causing my problems, because the particular courses I'm trying out are hidden and haven't been modified for two weeks (end of semester). I'll try out an automated backup with this course unhidden and modified and see if anything changes.

There also don't seem to be any bugs on the bugtracker specifically about this issue. After I try this out, I'll post a bug. Even if my fix does work, it probably really shouldn't be creating erroneous backups even if the course is not active.
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In reply to Kenny Backus

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Kenny Backus -
Well, no luck with that, I guess I should file a bug report.... it might be really hard to reproduce, though, if this isn't an issue with the majority of Moodle users.
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In reply to Kenny Backus

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by fouzia imran -

Hi

I am facing the same problem. Daily manual Back up for every course is a really tedious. Not sure if we could take manual backups in bulk?

I am using Xamp (Moodle 1.6) and really surprised that there is no scheduled back up utility for databases? (Please correct me if its me who is not aware of??)

Any thoughts?

Fouzia

 

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In reply to Brian Johnson

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Roger Spurgeon -
I, too, am having this problem.  Automatic backups of courses are not including the resources/activities/forums, etc.  Manual backups of courses do.  I am using 1.6.1.  Any word on a fix?  I can't find this in the bug tracker, has anyone posted this as a bug?  Should we?
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In reply to Roger Spurgeon

More backups problems with 1.6.2 - unpredictable results

by Tony Butler -

Hi folks,

I upgraded to 1.6.2+ to resolve this problem but it still hasn't entirely gone away. Now when I restore from a scheduled backup all links to resources and activities are created with the exception of contrib modules, which have icons but nothing else. If I click a link in the Activities block for one of these modules I get an error message saying, e.g. 'There are no dialogues'.

Stranger still, if I restore from a manual backup, all instances of the Book module are there (and work absolutely fine), but any instances of the Dialogue or Object don't exist at all - not even the icons this time!

I've also noticed that backup files themselves are actually included in the backups (as course files) now - this results in backups which double in size every time!

 - Has anyone else encountered these symptoms?

 - Are contrib modules actually supported in backups? (I've never noticed that they weren't included before)

 - Finally, are glossary entries supposed to restore with the glossary itself or do you have to import them afterwards? This is something else I've noticed isn't happening with our backups, that seems like it should.

Many thanks,

Tony

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In reply to Tony Butler

Re: More backups problems with 1.6.2 - unpredictable results

by Petr Skoda -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi!

3rd party modules must be updated to backup/restore properly in 1.6.x, scheduled backups from 1.6 and 1.6.1 are mostly unusable. The bug with growing backups was solved 2 days ago. Glossary and database entries are stored as user data.

I would recommend upgrading to fresh 1.6.2+.

skodak
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In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: More backups problems with 1.6.2 - unpredictable results

by Tony Butler -

Thanks Petr, I'll upgrade to the latest 1.6.2+.

So are you saying that I will need to upgrade all my contrib modules to the latest versions too - obviously I upgraded them when we first upgraded to Moodle 1.6.

Cheers,

Tony

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In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: More backups problems with 1.6.2 - unpredictable results

by Greg Francom -
Is there any way to fix this problem without upgrading to 1.6.2+?  I have 1.6.1+ and my automatically backed up courses have no content.  I cannot readily upgrade at this point. 
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In reply to Brian Johnson

Re: Automated backups don't include forums (but manual backups do!)

by Thirot Jean-Luc -
Hello,

If you see the modules (only the titles) but not the instances of the modules for some scheduled backups. It's maybe related to this bug.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52156

I don't know how to put or check the bug tracker,  if someone can do this job it would be a good thing.

Jean-Luc
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