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[Snapshot Pro] Import of Snapshot Failing

Hi Guys

I have to duplicate this site to another location as a backup in case this one goes down (on a different url). I was simply copy the WordPress Export XML over, but I now realised that doesn't update changes, only new posts.

I was looking to change so I could use Snapshot to copy metadata, posts etc over to the duplicate site. However, this fails consistently as the backups do not contain the Snapshot Manifest for some reason.

I am now worried about my backup strategy for this site, which relies quite heavily on Snapshot.

Any ideas what might be causing this problem? Note that I am not seeing it on other sites.

Thanks

Simon

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 0:51:46
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Snapshot Pro
  • Nithin Ramdas
    • Support Wizard

    Hi Webxopt,

    However, this fails consistently as the backups do not contain the Snapshot Manifest for some reason.

    Snapshot Minifest files doesn’t get created if the backup was corrupted, this could be due to many reason, like not having enough server resources, to conflicts. Since support access to your site was disabled, I wasn’t able to give much closer look at the dashboard side.

    https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#chapter-5

    I could notice you are using version 3.2.0, Snapshot has a latest version 3.2.0.1, which has fixes regarding imports. Would recommend you to test, and see whether updating the plugins makes any difference or not.

    If you still have issues even after plugin update, then please enable debug mode, so that it would give a better idea. To enable debug mode, open your wp-config.php file located in your root directory, and look for define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);. Change it to:

    define('WP_DEBUG', true);

    In order to enable the error logging to a file on the server you need to add:

    define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
    
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
    
@ini_set( 'display_errors', 0 );
    
define( 'SCRIPT_DEBUG', true );

    After making the above changes, please try to create a new backup, and if the import fails, the errors will be saved to a debug.log log file inside the /wp-content/ directory.

    Please attach these in your next reply in txt format file, so that we could give a closer look. You can find more details about debugging here.

    If looking for a quick solution, you could also try the Shipper plugin to migrate the site to another WP site, however Shipper is a migration plugin, and not a backup plugin, suggested in case you are looking for a workaround:

    https://wpmudev.com/project/shipper-pro/

    https://wpmudev.com/docs/wpmu-dev-plugins/shipper/

    Please let us know how debug goes so that we could give a closer look at Snapshot side, have a nice day.

    Kind Regards,

    Nithin

  • Webxopt
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    I am looking at Shipper too but not for backup. That fails too I’m afraid. I have to say that Shipper, the easy migration tool, hasn’t yet successfully run on any of the sites I have tried it on. Not exactly the must have tool I was hoping for!

    As for the Snapshot install. All the files are there and correct, just no manifest. I have updated Snapshot and am still seeing the same results.

    This site is very locked down (Bitnami on Amazon) including no access to wp-config.php and no FTP. So I’m stuck on that one I’m afraid.

    Any other ideas?

  • Nithin Ramdas
    • Support Wizard

    Hi Webxopt,

    Sorry to hear about that. There isn’t much that we could troubleshoot, if we don’t have access to the server files to make the above changes, and see what exact is causing the issue in the server side.

    Maybe, you could check the following article on how to create SFTP, or SSH would help, or not:

    https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/faq/administration/upload-files/

    https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/faq/get-started/connect-ssh/

    Other than that, you could also try plugins like File Manager, which allows to make the changes to the server side via plugin:

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-file-manager/

    However, using a plugin isn’t ideal, and not highly recommended as in case if any error occurs during edits, the only way to fix would be via SFTP, or SSH.

    As mentioned before, to better say what exact is causing the issue is to troubleshoot why the manifest files isn’t getting created, so that we could have a better idea about why the import also fails too, I’m afraid, the initial step for that would be enable debug mode as mentioned above.

    Other than that, maybe you could try increasing the server resources, ie memory_limit, max_execution_time etc in the server side, and see how a new snapshot backup goes. However, I’m not sure whether the server resources could be increased without accessing the server files in bitnami.

    https://docs.bitnami.com/installer/apps/akeneo/administration/increase-memory-limit/

    Checking with you hosting providers support would be helpful in making the above changes, so that we could help troubleshoot it further. Please let us know how that goes.

    Regards,

    Nithin