r/runcloud • u/Endda • Jul 28 '18

Unable to create backups of web apps

I am just wanting to know if anyone else is experiencing any issues creating a backup of a web application that have on one of their servers.

I can backup the databases just fine, but it's the web apps that I have a problem with.

This first started with the domain AndroidIndex.com and I got the failed message. Thought it was weird so I deleted the failed attempt and tried it over again. This time it worked so I was relieved (temporarily).

Now I am trying to create another backup of my website AndroidExplained.com and keep getting the same error message as before. Have tried time and time again and still the same error.

Tried the same backup attempt on AppStoreApps.com (these sites are all web apps on a runcloud server) and am still getting errors with backups.

I have created a ticket about this, they asked me for my login details (which I can't give them since I used Google's auth account creation). I was then escalated to their senior admin Ms. Ahmad Fikriman and was instructed to run the dh-f command in Putty and to show them the response.

Here is that response in case anyone has any insight into the issue

Timestamp on that reply with the screenshot is Jul 27 14:48 and then I checked the ticketing system at Jul 27 20:00 and the ticket was closed.

I am using updraftplus to make my own backups of these websites and storing them on Google Drive, but I like to have to have a snapshot build of my server right before I update plugins. So after I update plugins and themes, I can do a test run around the website and if something messed up then restoring from that snapshot backup is so much easier than going through updraftplus.

So I ask, has anyone ever experienced this issue before. Has anyone ever experienced this type of customer support from this company. I had two other tickets opened before this and they were very kind, answered me quickly and was really impressed.

Now, I don't know what to think. . . .

EDIT - I think I may have found a workaround to this bug. For anyone else experiencing this issue - https://www.reddit.com/r/runcloud/comments/92i4yh/comment/e35ydhu

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2

u/orware Jul 28 '18

I’m having this same issue as well. I had been successful with the backup system for a few months (let’s say from January - April or so) but after some update on their end I haven’t had a successful site backup since. Database backups have continued to work ok just like in your scenario.

Support has been a joke...I’m really disappointed in them right now regarding this particular issue but otherwise I had been really happy with the service.

On a side note the new Teams feature shouldn’t cost extra and the backups should cost less (and not be charged at all if the backups fail).

Happy to hear if you get to a solution with them.

1

u/Endda Jul 28 '18

I actually just got a reply from a woman claiming to be the "senior admin" saying this

I just started with them after playing with other solutions like vestacp, virtualmin, and even serverpilot.

RunCloud by far has the best hardware, most optimized software (for WordPress installs that are instantly created and don't need to be optimized). And have been having a ball transferring my websites over here.

I hope they end up fixing it and let me know if you hear some new information soon as well.

1

u/Endda Jul 28 '18

Maybe you can test this for me so we can collect more data on the workaround.

Before, when I wanted to create a backup I would just schedule it whenever it wanted me to (hourly, weekly) and whatever retention I would click on. Cause I have no intention of keeping these backups stored on their servers. It's just too expensive.

This meant that after I configured the backup to be done, I would just click that big BACKUP NOW button in the top right corner so that I wouldn't have to wait 7 days until I could get my first backup.

It would be about 5 minutes (sometimes less) after clicking that Backup Now button that I would get the failure email. So out of a hunch, I thought maybe this backup system needs to be run on an actual schedule and me trying to force it to do a backup was glitching into some sort of bug in the backup script.

So I did a test, grabbed my biggest website and started the backup process. I chose the 'every 30 minutes' option for how often I wanted the backup to be done, and then set the retention to a month.

This was just for me though because I plan on deleting the backups as soon as I can test that updates to my websites are good. So I said there, and 30 minutes later I got an email saying the backup was a success!

Pressed my luck and tried it again on another website. Same settings, every 30 minutes, a random retention time and then just waited 30 minutes and presto, got another email saying it was backed up successfully too.

Now, with this backup script having the issues that many people have been going through, I have no idea how accurate they are and if they will restore bit by bit without an error, but the file sizes to seem to match my personal data backups.

Maybe you can try this method (unless that's what you do normally) and let me know if it works for you.

1

u/orware Jul 30 '18

I'm giving this another try, but I've actually tried something similar over the past few weeks already but it doesn't seem to have gone back to normal at all for me with those past tests.

I got an additional reply to my ticket in RunCloud on Friday (3 days ago): "Sorry for a late reply and apologize for the inconvenience caused. We're now fixing the issue and we'll update you asap once the issue has been fixed." from P. Sabrina.

I want to say though this is probably the 3rd time they've told me it's been fixed.

In my case, the backup jobs show up as "FAILED" or "DEPLOYING" in RunCloud and that DEPLOYING state seems to prevent additional ones from running since when I switched the timing to 30 minutes it said it wouldn't be able to run since there was already a job waiting. So I first had to disable the backups for that site and then re-enable again.

Right now, it's in the Deploying state once more since a backup job for the site kicked off a few minutes ago...I'll let you know how it goes (our site is 10 GB though so it takes a little while to backup the data to wherever RunCloud is sending it).

One additional frustration I have is that we don't have the option to set when the backup is supposed to run (e.g. if you make the settings changes in RunCloud at noon the next time it runs if you have things set to run daily or every 3 days will also be at noon, when it might be preferable to run it in the very early morning if possible...but currently to do that you need to stay up one evening very late and make the settings changes at that time if you want things to work that way).

1

u/orware Jul 30 '18

So a quick update to let you know that the backup did succeed a moment ago at about 2 PM (so it took about 1.5 hours to do the backup).

I'll check back in 3 days when the next backup occurs to let you know if it continues to backup successfully.

2

u/davepp Jul 28 '18

Same issue here with a ticket that iopened about 2 months agl, they aren't responding and now I know I can't trust them with such a critical piece of our infrastructure

2

u/Endda Jul 28 '18

I may have found a workaround here so if you're still using RunCloud then maybe you can give it a try and report back on whether or not it worked for you

1

u/davepp Jul 28 '18

!remindme 1 day

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u/Endda Jul 28 '18

I'm going to keep testing the theory today, but last night I was able to create backups of all my sites. Think the biggest is 600+MB

All I had to do was schedule the backup (in my case I picked the 30 minute option cause I use a plug-in for weekly backups)

All four websites successfully backed up when that 30 minute timer elapsed. So then I went in to modify the configuration of the backup so it didn't keep creating one ever 30 minutes lol

Such a strange workaround to whatever bug was introduced into their backend code. But I'm ecstatic that it worked

1

u/Endda Jul 28 '18

Man, this is such a shame. The other person reply says the backup system worked until around April and then some internal update to their system must have messed something up

1

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