Support

Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#28114 Backup Fails

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by on Thursday, 17 August 2017 17:17 CDT

sohopros
Please look at the bottom of this page (under Support Policy Summary) for our support policy summary, containing important information regarding our working hours and our support policy. Thank you!

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach a ZIP file containing your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue. If the file is over 2Mb, please upload it on your server and post a link to it.

Description of my issue:
Backups are failing without creating the backup files when run by cron job. We are able to backup by manually initializing the backup. We have a dozen or more other Joomla sites on this server that are backing up without problems - some much bigger than this site - using the exact same configuration settings for Akeeba. So we suspect it is some local setting?

The troubleshooter says:
"Timeout while backing up
Error
There is already an issue with the backup engine saving its state. Please fix it before continuing.
Please try setting min execution time to 1, max execution time to 10 seconds (or if the PHP timeout is less than 10 seconds, use 75% of the PHP timeout), runtime bias 75%"

But those are the settings we are using.

Thanks, SOHO Prospecting Team

dlb
The backup job ended abruptly at 100 seconds. That suggests that your host did it. It is not at all unusual for a host to kill a CRON job that it thinks has run too long. When the job stops suddenly at an "even" number of minutes, seconds, etc. the first thing to do is go to the host and ask if there is a time limit on a CRON job.

If there is a time limit, can it be extended?

If the host did kill it and they won't extend, we do have a Plan B, but I'm not going to go into that yet. It bothers me that most of your sites are running fine.


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

sohopros
Hi Dale,
This is a dedicated server that we own, so I assume that we can change whatever setting is causing the time-out. But, as I said, all our other backups are running fine on the same server as this site is located. So there must be something different in the settings of this account. Can you suggest what setting may be causing this? For example max_execution_time is set to 200 on this account as well as others that do not fail.

Thanks, SOHO Prospecting Team

dlb
We're a tad deeper into server configuration than I normally go, so I'm just going to give you what Nicholas told me verbatim, so I don't mess it up trying to translate.
Have him log into a terminal *as the user which will be running the CRON job*

Then run `ulimit -a`

If he has a cpu time limit, that's the problem
and
Likewise, if his backups are unwriteable after a certain size he should look at the file size (-f) ulimit.
That second one he's thinking that it may be a file size issue. When the file grows to a certain maximum size, the backup dies. Keep in mind that the command line backup uses a different PHP with potentially different settings than the back end backup. And then he shared a couple of links for server settings that we could be running into:
Also look at cgroups, http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2014/11/04/restricting-process-cpu-usage-using-nice-cpulimit-and-cgroups

Also PAM limit https://linux.die.net/man/8/pam_limits

Please keep in mind that he MIGHT be running a daemon enforcing this

See https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=992706


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

sohopros
Hi Dale,
Here is the feedback from our sys admin:
============================================================
At present both the cpu time and file size for the user goldcoas are set to unlimited. There are no cgroup configurations nor PAM limits set on the server. Did they mention anything else which might be an issue as I am not seeing any local configurations which might be impacting these backups?
============================================================
I am also attaching three more log files. The backup completed fine on the 16th, and then failed again on the 17th and 18th. I attached all 3 of the logs.

Thanks, SOHO Prospecting Team

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Connect to an SSH terminal and run the backup. Does it complete? If it does, something's wrong with the CRON job or CRON server setup as we already said. Unfortunately we are developers, not sysadmins. We can only point you to the server and ask you to fix its configuration.

We know for a fact that limiting the CRON execution time is possible. Both hosts we've used ever since we introduced the CLI CRON script feature (Rochen and SiteGround) did that. Their default was low (around 90 seconds) and our site's CRON backup wouldn't run. We asked them to increase it and they confirmed they did, at which point our backup CRON jobs run to completion. So there is something, somewhere. Don't ask me what and where, it's way outside the scope of what we do for a living. I'd guess you need to ask a sysadmin who's done this job for a commercial host.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I would also like to draw your attention to the last bit of the information Dale relayed to you. It might NOT be a limit, it might be a daemon set up on your server which is actively killing processes. That would not be unheard of. For example, HostGator is killing processes, see https://forums.hostgator.com/process-maximum-execution-time-t127882.html?s=5429c48c7eebfd2afcb6f8949c90187f&

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

System Task
system
This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

Support policy: We would like to kindly inform you that when using our support you have already agreed to the Support Policy which is part of our Terms of Service. Thank you for your understanding and for helping us help you!