[SolidMean] ForumBackup

[SolidMean] ForumBackup 1.3.01

No permission to download
Overview Updates (18) Reviews (20) History Discussion
Just curious.. I thought if I wanted 1 backup of each (sql & code) that each time it backed up, it'd delete the old backups that were made so there's only 1 of each.

Mine just build up like so..
Screenshot_00-55-46.png
 
You and @Rambro might be having the same issue, maybe permission related. Does this problem only happen with the code backups, or both the database and code backups? Just curious, as your image shows 1 database backup.

If you have the debug option turned on inside the "Miscellaneous Options" tab of the addon, can you send me the last 200 lines of the debug log in your backup directory in a personal conversation? There might be an error in there indicating why older backups aren't being deleted.
 
SneakyDave said:
You and @Rambro might be having the same issue, maybe permission related. Does this problem only happen with the code backups, or both the database and code backups? Just curious, as your image shows 1 database backup.

If you have the debug option turned on inside the "Miscellaneous Options" tab of the addon, can you send me the last 200 lines of the debug log in your backup directory in a personal conversation? There might be an error in there indicating why older backups aren't being deleted.
Click to expand...
Sorry I forgot to get back to you on this Dave. I just turned on the debug option and will get you that code. I get backups of both the database and code:

1.webp
 
Thanks for the info.

I've been really busy the last few days but promise to look at this, and other issues, as soon as I can
 
I got your conversation. Like I said there, you should take a look to see if the cron is really running that long, or if the cron failed, and it left the board closed.

You can turn on the debug option of the addon on the Miscellaneous tab, and run the cron manually, and check the debug file created in the forumbackup directory to find out if the cron failed without an error, or what it's doing.
 
SneakyDave said:
I got your conversation. Like I said there, you should take a look to see if the cron is really running that long, or if the cron failed, and it left the board closed.

You can turn on the debug option of the addon on the Miscellaneous tab, and run the cron manually, and check the debug file created in the forumbackup directory to find out if the cron failed without an error, or what it's doing.
Click to expand...


Hi @SneakyDave,

The cron (backup) runs weekly, and lasts a few minutes. When it is running my forum has a maintenance message because the board is not active in that duration. I get an email when it is completed.

I've been using this addon since March 2015 and have never experienced any problems (Thanks again for the addon :) )

Today however, my board was not active for an hour. The backup probably started running but failed (I got no email. I'll check for temp files soon). The board active options weren't working. 15 minutes after trying out whatever I thought of at that moment (disable cron, disable addon, clear CDN and reboot server - that was all I could do from my mobile browser :) ), the board was active and the board active options were working correctly.

I think I am on the 1.1.5 version. Will an update to 1.1.8 help?

I will check the debug options. Thanks.
 
Yes, it sounds like your cron didn't complete for some reason, if you didn't get an email as expected, and your board was still unavailable.

"The board active options weren't working. " I'm not sure what that means, but if you set your board to active, that would have fixed the problem of the board being unavailable.

I don't think an upgrade would improve whatever condition cause the cron to fail. You'd have to look at PHP logs, XenForo server logs, contact your host to see if something was updated, etc. to try to identify that. Make sure you have enough disk space, and turn on the addon's debug option might identify the problem when it happens again.
 
SneakyDave said:
"The board active options weren't working. " I'm not sure what that means, but if you set your board to active, that would have fixed the problem of the board being unavailable.
Click to expand...

I was able to tick the board active option, but it wasn't getting saved. The server wasn't responding to the requests. I didn't try multiple times as I immediately proceeded to reboot my server.


SneakyDave said:
I don't think an upgrade would improve whatever condition cause the cron to fail. You'd have to look at PHP logs, XenForo server logs, contact your host to see if something was updated, etc. to try to identify that. Make sure you have enough disk space, and turn on the addon's debug option might identify the problem when it happens again.
Click to expand...

I'll have a look at the server and turn on the debug option. Thanks :)
 
sgr said:
The server wasn't responding to the requests. I didn't try multiple times as I immediately proceeded to reboot my server.
Click to expand...

That sounds like to me like you were having system problems of some type. The addon would never have that much control that you need to reboot your system. Unless the artificial intelligence feature has become sentient!.
 
SneakyDave said:
That sounds like to me like you were having system problems of some type. The addon would never have that much control that you need to reboot your system. Unless the artificial intelligence feature has become sentient!.
Click to expand...


Lol. True.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant that the server wasn't responding to requests only on the "board active" option page, i.e. the option wasn't getting saved. Other pages were working, but only for admins since members were seeing a maintenance message. I'll turn on the debug option and get back to you if this repeats itself.
 
@SneakyDave would it be possible to add an option to set the "From" email as well as the "To" email? I'd also be ok with using the default XenForo email information.

The reason I ask is that it's sending it from the same email as it's sending to and GApps gets confused and puts it in my sent folder :(
 
It uses the same email function as the rest of XenForo. Do you have the same problem if you use the Contact Us function, emailing yourself?
 
I'll test that in a few, but that's weird.. I don't have it set that way last I checked. It's set to matt@ for the target and should send from no-reply@ if I'm not mistaken.

Edit: the Contact email is matt@ but the default is no-reply@ as I thought.. I changed the contact to admin@ now.
 
Hi This is a great add on to have.

After auto running the backup with the "Put Forum in Maintenance Mode" selected
my forum displays the below message and does not come out of maintenance mode.
the next morning when I wake up I needed to go into admin to make the forum active manually.

How can this be prevented so the forum does not stay in maintenance mode all night?

Forum Closed 1.webp

the check box gets unchecked when backup is activated
and the check box does not get checked when it is done?
until I go into admin and check it.

board active 1.webp
 
I run into this on a shared server. I have my cron jobs 30 minutes apart and what happens is that one times out and throws a server error, but you don't see that when it runs on a cron. For me, it's the Code cron that does it because that is larger and I think the zip process takes up too much resources and the host kicks it out. You can see if this is the problem by manually running the Code cron a few times and see if you get an error screen at some point. What happens in this case is that the job does not complete, and you don't get an email alert either saying it did complete, because the process got kicked out by the host. Sometimes you will have a .zip file generated and other times not, for me it usually is which is odd. But the bottom line is it is usually host related and resource related.

My solution to this was to recommend breaking up the cron by excluding a directory, which is why that is now an option. I exclude images which is the biggest one. That seems to help but not completely, I think the resources taken up are stil too much for some reason. But I haven't dove into it again lately. I just uncheck the "close board" option so that it doesn't shut the board off.

also make sure your crons are spaced apart. If they run at 4am or something, someone has to ping the site to trigger the cron and if no one visits until both are due one can run right after the other and sometimes that doesn't play well.

I also run this on a VPS and it never errors out and I always get both backups with no problem, and the board is set to shut down during each cron. So my conclusion is that it is host related.
 
Sam F said:
How can this be prevented so the forum does not stay in maintenance mode all night?
Click to expand...

If you're forum is staying in maintenance mode for long periods of time, then your backup probably isn't working correctly.

Floyd is correct. I've noticed some shared hosts throttle or kill longer running processes, or ones that use 'tar' and/or 'gzip' that can use a lot of CPU. This seems to happen more on the code backups than the database backups due to the size of the file.

You can follow these steps to try to identify the problem, or send me a conversation, and we can discuss.

1) Go to your "Code Options" of the addon, and uncheck "Put Forum in Maintenance Mode?"
2) Go to the "Miscellaneous Options" and turn check the "Debug Mode?" box.
3) In the XenForo admin, go to the Tools -> CronEntries page, and find the "ForumBackup / Code" entry.
4) Hover over the "Controls" menu for that cron entry, and click the "run" option. This will manually run the backup task.
5) Find a debug/log file named [yourbackupfilename].log in your backup directory, either via FTP, SSH.
6) Look at that log file, scroll to the bottom of it, it will have the details of the backup process in it. Each backup task should have a "START" and "END", with a step by step of what's going on in between those lines. If you don't see an END steps for a backup task, then the script is getting killed, and not finishing.

Send me a PC with the most recent details from your debug log if you have any questions, or want me to look at it.
 
Fayettemat said:
I'll test that in a few, but that's weird.. I don't have it set that way last I checked. It's set to matt@ for the target and should send from no-reply@ if I'm not mistaken.

Edit: the Contact email is matt@ but the default is no-reply@ as I thought.. I changed the contact to admin@ now.
Click to expand...
I'm a little confused about this, but I'll take some time to make sure it's using the correct email. Thanks for testing it out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom