Server cron and backup to S3 – only starts when visiting Updraft backend

Hi,

Do you see any warning message on your WordPress dashboard? If none, can you please send us a copy of the backup log?
This log can be found in the Existing Backups tab of the UpdraftPlus dashboard.
If you cannot access the UpdraftPlus dashboard, then you can find the log file in the ‘wp-content/updraft’ directory via FTP or your hosts’ file manager.

Best Wishes,
Bryle

How could I send you the log? Can’t share it here. The backup that got triggered once I visited (happening to other sites as well) is still running

No warning message on the dashboard. I can imagine that it is related to cron job and / or firewall. And maybe some additional Updraft topic I am not aware of.

I enabled server cron job on all sites. I installed the cron status checker to confirm that the cron job itself gets scheduled (on some sites every 2 minutes, most sits every 5 minutes).

I am not sure though how I can read and interpret the data from the cron events and cron schedule I can see in WordPress.

However, I am still analyzing, I think this problem is only happening on my own hosting. I have sites running at other hosting providers and don’t see the same problem.

Can it be a problem for Updraft when I have WP_CRON disabled, as I run server cron jobs?

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true) ;

The disabled cron is likely the problem, please see here for a guide on this: https://updraftplus.com/faqs/my-scheduled-backups-do-nothing-backup-now-stops-midway/

You will need to enable your cron

I saw that article many times, but I do have a server cron job. If I have a server job, of course I set define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true)

You may need to increase the frequency of the cron job (try every 5-10 minutes)

I have it already like that – even more frequent. I can try to watch it daily (I am doing that already for some time as I have different situations). I am considering replacing WPvivid with Updraft again – but if I start to run into issues with Updraft as well, no need to consider that move

(on some sites every 2 minutes, most sits every 5 minutes).

UpdraftPlus can only make a backup when WordPress is loaded into Memory.? This normally happens when someone visits the site (which is why the backup only happens when you are in the back end.

What url is the cron job set to visit?, it should be calling: https://example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron?(note the?/wp-cron.php)?

The cron job looks like this and works as expected:

wget -q -O - "https://mywebsite.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron" >/dev/null 2>&1

Are you telling me that Updraft won’t work with server cron job? That can’t be. It’s one of the greatest plugins for backups, it must work with reliable server cron jobs

If you have a cron job visiting the site regularly enough it should work (your cron job does appear to be going to the correct place, it was worth ruling out as an issue)

I am checking the backups again right now. Same happening. No backup. Then I click on the Updraft Backup tab and see that it just started.

However, I don’t think this is happening to all sites. So perhaps it is specific to one or a few sites only.

If you have a cron job visiting the site regularly enough

I am not sure if the cron is actually “visiting” the site, but the server cron runs every two minutes, and I can see that also with the Cron Status plugin in WordPress

So it means, even though the cron job runs regularly, the backup process only gets triggered once I log in to the backend and/or go to the Updraft backend screen

I am just out of ideas how to further troubleshoot that. Any suggestions with your experience what I could look into?

I tried something. I disabled the automatic daily backup. I enabled it again. This should create a new schedule/event on a new time of the day.

There is a small possibility, that the backup job run around 6am in the morning and that I have checked it around that time.

Now it states the following, and I can do checks based on that event in the next days.

updraft_backup_database
Once Daily
September 3, 2023 12:58 am

Thanks for the update, let us know how you get us along.

Consider it closed. I would need to monitor for a few days and will do. But I think I literally checked every day in the morning and Updraft cron event was scheduled at the very same time (normally they run in the night)

So I always thought that my visit in the backend triggered the backup job, while it was actually triggered by the cron job that had a weird time in the morning instead of some time during the night

I will mark it as resolved but you can “u-nresolve” if you need us to look into it further.

Hi,

At the moment your page is displaying with no issue (I do realise that you may have deactivated the plugin)

If the plugin is deactivated, can you activate it again but can you switch of the option to “Enable minify”: https://snipboard.io/lPLAIC.jpg

Do you page display ok?