Cannot Perform Full Cpanel Backup

[Brofar]

My site hosted on unni cannot perform a full cPanel backup.

 

I'm using 6 / 20 GB on my shared hosting and when I try to generate a full backup, two 13 byte backup files are created and that's it, one is a file with no extension, and the other has the same filename but is a tar.gz. Neither file increases in size, ever.

 

Then after maybe half an hour one of two events occur:

 

1. I get an email saying the backup was completed with a partial log, file is still only 13 bytes.

or

2. In cPanel, under the backups section, the backup is listed as (failed, timeout)

 

I've googled around and the only really useful thread I found on it was on cPanel's support forums in which they said there may be a configuration issue. The file is 13 bytes because cPanel started the backup and wasn't able to continue it. They suggest to check the logs at /usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup/, but considering that I'm not a root user, that's impossible for me to do.

 

Support was nice enough to generate a backup file for me once, at midnight, but I would really like to be able to perform my own full backups and not have to submit a ticket each and every time.

 

I'm posting here instead of submitting a ticket because I fear that support will only try to create the backup for me once again, and I'm looking for a solution to the underlying problem, not just symptom relief.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Brofar

[TCH-Thomas]

Welcome to the forum, Brofar.

 

The full backup are usually only used when/if you want move your account to another cPanel server and not needed very often for a common cpanel user.

 

Have you tried the partial backups feature in the cpanel?

[Brofar]

Thanks for the reply, Thomas.

 

I have a couple issues with your solution:

 

1. Having one backup that includes everything is an optimal choice for me as opposed to multiple partial backups

 

2. Performing a full backup allows the backup file to be saved to the server, using the partial backups forces my browser to download each one. I don't have the bandwidth to be downloading daily backups.

 

I was intending to use the backup script I'm conjunction with a cron job as instructed by Bruce at https://forums.totalchoicehosting.com/index.php?showtopic=30139&do=findComment&comment=195230

[TCH-Bruce]

If you aren't going to be downloading the backups then it's pretty pointless to even bother doing them. Leaving them on the server serves no real purpose since if there is a failure of the hardware (the main reason we make backups) not only would the content being backed up be gone but so to would your backup.

 

Using the script we posted remember if you try to email the backup that it most likely will fail if you have more than 20mb of data backed up.

 

I run several blogs and don't backup the whole site daily but do backup my databases daily. That's a whole lot less to backup since the core of the sites rarely change.

[Brofar]

I have another server with which I would be performing a wget then deleting the backup file from my TCH site.

 

My database is 100mb, so the email method won't work either way...

[TCH-Bruce]

To backup your databases I would recommend using dbsender and modify the parameters to not send the email and not to delete the backup file following this post.

 

You could then write a script to move the file using wget and deleting it when done.

[Brofar]

Thanks for your reply, Bruce, but once again this is skirting around the overall issue at hand.

 

Why can't you just look into why the full backups aren't working?

[TCH-Bruce]

I am a volunteer for TCH. If you would like one of the techs to look into the cPanel issue please open a ticket at the help desk. Link is in my signature.