Can't do manual backup

Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Number of replies: 20
Recently my automated backups began to fail so I tried doing a manual one today on the course that failed.

When I tell Moodle to do te backup it takess me to the screen where I select what to back up with the check boxes, but when I click on Continue it just takes me back to the Choose a Course screen.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

John
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In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Having looked at the logs I see that the automated backups get as far as Zipping files and then the log entry stops.

The manual backups just send me round this loop - select course - check items to back up - select course - check items....

J
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Stefan Eberhard -
In reply to Stefan Eberhard

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Hi Stefan

Yes I saw that thread but I'm not sure how that helps - different behaviour isn't it?

J
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Stefan Eberhard -
Some problems can be caused by IE. I use Firefox
In reply to Stefan Eberhard

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Hi Stefan

Thanks but I use Firefox too.

It's the same in IE and FF

J
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
It seems that if I tell it not to back up choices then it will back up.

Can anyone tell me what to do to Choices to get things back to normal?

Best wishes

John
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
My automatic back ups have been failing for a month now.

Manual backups can only be done if I omit all the resources and associated user data which sort of makes it a rather pointless exercise.

It seems that backup is really Moodle's Achilles' Heel - Fantastic software in most ways (even if the move from 1.5 to 1.8 has really confused me as to where things are now! It used to be so intuitive - now it looks like someone has deliberately hidden everything!). Anyway - if I can't do a proper backup I can hardly offer these course in the real world, so I am really frustrated that the backup doesn't work.

The logs on the auto backup stop at "zipping files", The manual backups so nothing and just return me to a list of course to back up.

Does anybody please have any ideas as to how I might resolve this?

best wishes

John
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Andy Tagliani -
John

Can you turn the degugging administration->server->debugging and choose "show alle errors" in no case the debugging for developer, mark the option and than into a course and try to make a manual backup. I think it will fail, but if you see any error warning, copy them and come back here. Did you check the server configuration, special the limits, max_execution etc. ?

Andy
In reply to Andy Tagliani

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Hmm - if I try to set debugging to developer level I get this when I save

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </BR>.
Location: http://merchandiseplanning.co.uk/wbt/admin/settings.php
Line Number 328, Column 3:</div>
--^

I am using a Fantastico installed version of 1.8.4

I set the lvel to the next highest and tried a manual backup - it just returns me to the list of course sto back up. When I look at the back up log it says that the last attempt was the failed scheduled back u at 9:00 and not the manual attempt at 10:10

As everything has changed / moved in 1.8 I don't know where to look for the limits / max execution etc. It feels as though these may be the culprit if they can be located though. I will do a search now but any quick help much appreciated if anyone just knows

In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Andy Tagliani -
John

I wrote, in no case use the debugging for developer!!! Choose "Show all reasonable PHP debug messages", mark below "Display debug messages" and now gonna try to make a backup and see if cames any error warnings.

The limts you can see in the website-administration->server-php information and or your server admin should chech the php.ini!

Andy
In reply to Andy Tagliani

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
"I wrote, in no case use the debugging for developer!!!"

oops blush

OK - I changed the debug level as indicated.

When I try to do a manual backup it just returns me to the list of courses to back up each time - no messages at all. and the debug inf shows that the last backup was at 9:00, not the manual one I just tried, so preumably some chack is being failed BEFORE it tries to do the backup here

As I'm on hosted site I would have to get my host to edit php.ini then? Not sure they will do that but I can try thoughtful

Thanks for the input Andy - I hope this can be solved!!

Best wishes

John
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Jesus Picornell Alsina -
Hello John, have you solved this problem?
I have exactely the same problem and I can't fount the solution.



Jesus.
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Jason Mellen -
I have been having the same issues but figured it was just something on my end. There is only one course having these issues and it has about 250+mb of media files. I figured it was a size issue. When I exclude course files it works fine.

I've also gone through and looked for permissions anomalies in all the files and found nothing that should be a problem.

Glad to know I'm not alone with these troubles.

Couldn't find related tracker so added a new one:
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-14464

Jason
In reply to Jason Mellen

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
Hi Guys

No I haven't worked out what is wrong yet

My ISP insists that there are no error logs on the server.

The course that is failing is the largest one I have, but even if exclude logs, user files and course files it just returns me to the choose a course to back up page

I recall having a similar issue with 1.4 that resolved itself when I upgraded to 1.5, but I am seriously worried about reliability going forward sad

J


In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Jason Mellen -
Petr Skoda suggested (via tracker) that I use external PHP binaries because my file sizes were getting too big. That seemed to fix the problem for me.
In reply to Jason Mellen

Re: Can't do manual backup

by John Hobson -
External PHP binaries?

What are they wide eyes
In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Dan Marsden -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Plugins guardians Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
use an external Zip program instead of the ones built into php - look in Moodle administration > Server > System Paths

smile

Dan
In reply to Jason Mellen

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Mark Stevens -
I had a similar issue, but it was resolved with changing php's suhosin settings from 200 to 400 as in MDL-17056:

suhosin.post.max_vars = 400
suhosin.request.max_vars = 400
In reply to Mark Stevens

Re: Can't do manual backup

by Gwen Brake -

How do you do change the php suhosin settings?

I'm a novice admin having the same problem.

In reply to John Hobson

Re: Can't do manual backup [SOLVED]

by Ernesto Rapetti -

Hi all!

I had this very same issue using moodle 1.9 and it turn out that the problem was the max_input_vars PHP limit. Its default value was 1000 and the course I couldn't backup needed more checkboxes to start the backup process.

 

The solution was to modify /etc/php.ini addling a line like this:

max_input_vars = 10000
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