CPanel backups failing.

[Katzy]

Hi there!

I was directed here from the SMF fora, here:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=34.0

because I'm having some serious problems.

Before we went down to the west-country, last weekend, I took a backup of the forum, like you do, from cpanel.

No problems.

When we got back, I took another one.

Problem is, it started fine, coming down at over 400 KB/s, but it slowed, very quickly, to a crawl, before failing, altogether.

It also knocked the forum out, for 45 minutes, or so.

Every time I've tried it, since, has resulted in the same thing happening.

The host's confused and I'm.. well... confused.

If I use the Java SMF database backup program, that I downed from the SMF site, everything works, like a charm.

OK. So I can still back up the database, using the java thing.

Thing is, there seems to be no way of taking a full home directory backup.


I can optimise the tables OK. I can do the old "Find and repair errors" thing, OK, too. Both these are done in the SMF software.

Dunno if it's a clue, but when I download stuff from the forum, via ftp, some files always fail and they're always gif files. (That's been the case for some time, too).

Well now I'm seriously fucking confused!

Using my better half's machine, I backed up. The forum's still there and the database came down at over 210 KB/s. The full home directory came down at the same speed.

So, it's looking like it's something to do with my machine...

How the Hell can taking a backup cause the forum to die?!?!?

Could the download dropping to a crawl and failing cause that?

The ftp problem doesn't manifest itself, either, if I use my wife's machine.

Could this be one of my security programs being a bit over-zealous?

I thought I'd ask, here, in case anyone else had suffered these problems.

Any ideas?

 

[Katzy]

Obviously not.

Shame...

 

[jayh38]

Don't get excited if no one answers. Usually its due to not giving enough useful information, although you have given a lot of unusable information.

Mind you I will give comments assuming that you are client of a hosting provider and you are not running a dedicated server. With that said, you would get better answers from your hosting provider.

Backups require a lot of resources to archive and compress before it gets sent to you. When a server hits a certain load from other activity, backup processes may be paused for quite a while and proceed later when things cool down and result in what appears to be a failure.

During cpanel backups, your database will not be usable while it dumps your database. This will prevent corruption and out of sync files. You should use your database backup utility provided by your forum script if there is one available.

You can then create backups or have your provider OMIT database archives for your account and eliminate the unavailability problem. If its paused or hung during your database dump, then yes, your forum will not be accessible for that time either.

Either way, your provider may have a busy box and or your site may be very large at the same time. I would suggest discovering your low usage periods and try a backup at that time but hopefully it would not be during the systems full account backup.

If your host does take full account backups which they should, then he could make them available for you in your cpanel and eliminate you the need of creating your own on demand.

good luck.

 

[Katzy]

Curiously enough, backups did start appearing in the root of the site. None recently, though. I'll ask them about that, though. Thanks.

I understand what you say about server-loads and the like. I've tried at all sorts of times, though, and it happens every time. It seems to be something on my machine that's causing this, which is why I supplied all the apparently unrelated information.

Just in case anyone else had suffered from the same problem.

I can download the home directory back fine on my other half's machine.

My host's looked at everything that he can and there doesn't seem to be a problem at their end. I trust them, on that, because they've been the perfect host, thus far.


Thanks for noticing me.

 

[brendanrtg]

We used to use smf for our forums and experience quite a number of problems. Backups are always incomplete and if we investigate the files further, some files ended up being owned by root and cannot NEVER be downloaded as the user.

One example would be those under sttachments and some upgraded files, dunno if the ownership is an issue related to the problem.

Since then, we have stopped using SMF completely.

 

[Katzy]

We've been using it for ages and not had any problems.

 

[brianc]

Obviously not.

Shame...

I personally don't appreciate gutter language in a public forum. Shame on you for not showing any public decency.

Brian

 

[Katzy]

Is it OK if that statement confuses me?

 

[Katzy]

OK. Figured it.

As it has been, for over a year, my router was attached to my machine via the USB.

It's now just connected via the ethernet card and all is well.

Odd that it only affected the one site, via ftp, and the associated cpanel, though, innit?

Also odd that it's worked, perfectly, for all that time, too.

Still, all's well that ends well, ay?