Moodle in English: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Paul Nijbakker - Thursday, August 16, 2007, 7:54 PM

Hello,

We face a serious problem. Our database got corrupted after the 11.6 upgrade, because the database did not convert to utf8-unicode (but since we recieved no error messages during the upgrade we assumed it was OK. Upgrading to 1.7 or 1.8 was impossible, so we created a clean 1.8 install and moved backed up courses from the 1.6 environment to the 1.8 and restored them.

At first everything went very smoothly, but the more courses we restored the more of them refused to unzip. It started with a course of 250 Mb, but by now we are down to courses larger than 3 Mb refusing to unzip:

Creating temporary structures
Deleting old data
Copying zip file
Unzipping backup <= And here it stops!

What could be the trouble here? We have many Gigs of free space both on C: and D: disk. The backups restore normally in the 1.6 installation regardless of size, so it seems to be something in the 1.8 installation memory that has been filling up. But what can it be? mixed

I am at my wits end, for we have moved 500 courses and have 300 courses left to move before next week! surprise

Rgrds,
Paul.

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Mauno Korpelainen - Thursday, August 16, 2007, 8:19 PM

Hi Paul,

have you tried debugging errors

Administration -> Server -> Debugging
Debug messages: ALL

The problem might be that those courses have some problematic modules or "faulty" data in database

EDIT: I have not seen it myself but read also http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-9290

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Paul Nijbakker - Thursday, August 16, 2007, 9:45 PM

Hi Mauno,

Thanks for responding. Turning debugging on does not result in any error messages being displayed, we tried that. (BTW: backups that do restore show the following note: Notice: Undefined variable: nonrestmod in D:\oursite\backup\restore_form.html on line 328)

It is possible that there is corrupted data in those files, even though we took pains when making back ups to exclude anything that could cause errors (In fact it is the reason we move the environment course by course: It was a solution you suggested). But faulty data would not explain why the restore problem affects smaller and smaller files and why a backup file that we restored without problems earlier today, now will not restore anymore.

The solution suggested in the trackers looks too complex for me to attempt. I do not follow what they are talking about and I am not sure this refers to our problem, because, as I mentioned, the problem increases, it is not a constant (it is like pushing objects through a door that gets smaller all the time).

Rgrds,
Paul.

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Paul Nijbakker - Thursday, August 16, 2007, 10:12 PM

P.S. The size of backups that will restore is now down to 1.6 Mb (WTF? angry

)

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Mauno Korpelainen - Thursday, August 16, 2007, 11:28 PM

Have you tried rebooting your server - your server may have too many processes open and running out of RAM...or something like that. Do you have any way of monitoring open processes?

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Paul Nijbakker - Friday, August 17, 2007, 1:40 PM

Hi Mauno,

When asked about this, our IT staff told me that Apache had gobbled up about half our RAM. After the reboot big backups restored normally again. Thanks for the tip!

Rgrds,
Paul.

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Stephen Bourget - Friday, August 17, 2007, 12:25 AM

I ran into similar problems when I moved my schools site from Moodle 1.6.3 to Moodle 1.8.2. Here are a few things you may want to check:

1. Were the course backups created using the automated backups or were they run manually using the backup feature in the course. I found that several of the courses that would not restore on my site were built using the automated backups. The courses restored properly when I backed them up manually

2. On some of my extremely large courses, the backup files from Moodle 1.6 were bad because the script was timing out: The directions in this thread seemed to help:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=61847

3. Do you have any 3rd party modules? I found that on my installation that the ipodcast module was breaking my course backups because the apostrophes were not encoded correctly. If I didn't include that module, backups and restores worked fine with those courses.

4. Do any of the "bad" courses restore correctly on a clean install of Moodle 1.6.5+ ?

I hope this helps,

-Steve

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Paul Nijbakker - Friday, August 17, 2007, 1:24 PM

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for your reply:

1. All our courses were backed up manually.
2. What do you call extremely large? All the backups that we tried out in the 1.6.5 installation restored properly.
3. Yes we had a number of third party modules in the 1.6 install, which is why we made manual course backups leaving out those third party modules.
4. Yes, when we try to restore the "bad" backups in 1.6 they restore normally.

Rgrds,
Paul.

Average of ratings: -

Re: 1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8

by Mauno Korpelainen - Friday, August 17, 2007, 1:37 AM

If I can understand this righ, nonrestmod has some value if some module isn't restorable. Now you get an error that this variable is undefined = there are no such modules in those courses that were restored properly???

I guess that either some of your modules have not been upgraded (have you upgraded book to correct version 1.8?) or some old (versions of) modules (exercise, dialogue, feedback, non standard question types, hacks etc in database may cause this - start from one of thoses courses that can't be restored and check activities and database (are all tables unicode...)

Even one ' in a wrong place may stop restoring - but if you find the cause you can repair it.

Average of ratings: -

Backup and restore

1.6 backups not unzipping in 1.8