Duplicator Backup Restoration Error

I had just had a very scary event. After this failure occurred, I went back to another site which was were the original Duplicator zip file came from before any of this stuff started. And it turns out many of the files on the original site were deleted by the error/failure I mentioned above and it completely crashed that site.

I am so lucky I had just created a new Duplicator backup of that site though before I ran this other Duplicator backup I had tried to install on another domain, and which just failed, or I would have lost that other entire unrelated site.

I don’t know why it would go in and delete files from another site, but I am really concerned about using this plug-in at all again after this event. If I didn’t have a backup of the site that Duplicator deleted the arbitrary files from, then the loss of that site would have been catastrophic.

This is how the chain events happened from the beginning until the crash just now and it actually crashed that same site and deleted files from it two times now.

1 – I created a backup of the original site using Duplicator. No problems.
2 – I then installed that backup onto a test site in a subfolder on the same domain. No problems.
3 – I then created a backup of the test site using Duplicator. No problems.
4 – I then deleted the entire original site because it was having some strange issues with the core installation/database. No problems.
5 – I then used the Duplicator backup I created from the test site to rebuild the original site. That all worked fine. No problems.
6 – Then I deleted the test site which I didn’t need any more now that the original site had been correctly restored.
7 – Then as soon as I deleted the test site, many of the files on the original site got deleted in the process (not by me, but by removing the test site from the server somehow) and then the original site crashed.
8 – Then I tried using the backup that Duplicator created from the test site to restore the original site a second from that Duplicator backup. This time it failed and I got the error message I mentioned above because it seems it was looking for a file on the test site and the test site was no longer there.
9 – So I used a second backup I had created of the original site with the Updraft plug-in to restore the site. Luckily that worked or I would have lost the entire site after Duplicator deleted some of the files.
10 – I then was thinking maybe the restore failed from the Duplicator backup the second time because I thought perhaps I used a mismatching Installer.php file with the zip file by mistake.
11 – So then I decided to try and use that Duplicator backup (that worked the first time and failed the second time) to try and restore the test site backup to a brand new test site on a completely different domain, but on the same server.
12 – That failed as well and then I got the error message I provided above in my first post.
13 – After that failure to installed the test site backup on a different domain is when Duplicator seemed to have went back to the original site and deleted a bunch of files from the original site a second time (as I mentioned in the beginning of this post). At that point the original site wasn’t even related to the Duplicator backup I was using as that Duplicator backup had been created from a test site that is no longer in existence.

So this linking of sites through the Duplicator backup files, and how the backup file could in any way cause Duplicator to delete files from a completely different site is absolutely insane.

As I said, if I hadn’t just happened to backup the original site again using Duplicator before I tried doing this test backup restoration on a completely different domain, then I could have lost that entire site. The backup I am referring to that I had just created is on the original site I had to restore from Updraft after Duplicator deleted files from it the first time when this Duplicator backup failed to restore it from a Duplicator backup.

Yes, I do also still have that Updraft backup of that site as well, even if I didn’t happen to create a Duplicator backup of the original site before I started the process again on another test site. But still, Duplicator could have really done me over if I didn’t have other backups of that site created with a different backup plug-in. We are talking a $10,000 site here and months of programming and content development that could have been destroyed in a matter of seconds from Duplicator deleting files from the wrong site during a restoration.

The more I think about what just happened, the more I think this absolutely nuts that something like this could even happen. Even if it is my bad in some way, one wouldn’t expect that running a Duplicator backup on another site would result in a Duplicator backup file deleting files from a different site on its own. This is off the charts.

Hey Jixxer,

Sorry you ran into a scare! As far as the Duplicator code base is concerned it can only remove files from the wp-snapshots directory and at that only 5 specifically named files which are related to the installer. In all 3 million plus downloads we have never heard of this issue. Only thing I can currently think of is that your site may have been hacked and the code was altered, because right now there are very few calls to even unlink files and the calls are highly specific to files in a certain location with a very specific name…

If you want to submit a support ticket I can have a closer look at the the setup and see if anything looks to be out of place….

Hope that helps!

Thanks. Yes, I don’t expect you would have heard of something like this before happening with your plug-in. I never would have imagined it either. But twice it deleted my site after failed recoveries from a Duplicator backup. It wiped out half the files on one of my other websites, which was related to the domain of the original Duplicator backup as I mentioned in my long explanation above.

I can assure you that the site in question has no hack, strange code alterations, etc. I have also had successful backups with your plug-in in the past and so this is a first time for me that I have had any sort of problem. But I would not assume since it never happened before that it can’t happen. I have built many sites and have never seen anything like it. And it happened. I saw it. At first when half the site got deleted immediately after I deleted the test site I thought maybe I had accidentally deleted some files on the other site myself. But then today it happened again right after I ran the second test with that same backup file on a completely different domain and that’s how I know it really happened from using this Duplicator backup.

I also had restored a backup on another site at the same time, then also created a test site from that backup, and I am now too scared to delete that test site even though I am done with it because I am fearful it will delete my other site as well.

Also, the site that all this happened on is running one of the most popular selling themes. So I can’t imagine there are any issues with theme code, etc.

Hey Jixxer,

Something still seems amiss here:

7 – Then as soon as I deleted the test site, many of the files on the original site got deleted in the process (not by me, but by removing the test site from the server somehow) and then the original site crashed.

When you say you deleted the test site, how did you go about this, FTP, cpanel what actions did you perform when you ‘deleted the test site’? Was the test site in a sub-directory of your original main site or vice versa? What was the folder layout like in all of these steps something like this:

public_html/main-site
public_html/test-site

Did you perform any other steps not mentioned above? Do you have any symbolic links (hard or soft) setup on your server?

Sorry for the late reply on this Cory. I have just had so much on my plate this last week.

To answer your question, I deleted the test site first by using Quick Installer in cpanel to remove the scripts and then I deleted the actual folder the site was residing in using File Manager via cpanel.

I didn’t remove the database yet though so that is still there on the server, but databases are usually only 4-5 mb so I normally don’t bother to delete them.

Also, yes, the test site was in a sub-directory of the original main site. So it was like this: public_html/main-site/test-site

I feel I gave you all the steps already. No others involved. No symbolic links are involved with the site either as far as I know. There were no locked or password protected directories or folders involved with the site either.

One more important point though. I ran a second test with this same backup files as I mentioned. At first I wasn’t sure if when I deleted the test site that actually deleted part of the original site by mistake since it all happened so fast and at the same exact time I deleted the test site. So for the second test I took the same Duplicator backup file and created a new test site with it like this in a sub-directory on a completely different domain:

public_html/different-domain/test-site

And then after I deleted this new test site in the same way from the other domain’s sub-folder it again deleted files and crashed the original site which was running on the original domain and in a different folder and under a different domain now completely.

As I also mentioned, and as a separate issue, at the time I had also created a second test site from a site running on a completely different domain and using the same method I used above when I had the first crash. I am also ready to get rid of the other test site now, but I am too scared that by doing that it will end up crashing another one of my valuable websites such that I don’t dare to delete it. I really would like to delete it as well though as it is taking up valuable nodes of my hosting account that are limited by my host provider.

Thanks

Hey Jixxer,

At this point in your workflow as you have described above (notably point 7) I’m not really seeing how Duplicator can be involved in the removal of your files. If you used cPanel to remove the files at your test-site, and then all of a sudden files are gone at another location, where at in your steps are you clicking on a button or performing some request to Duplicator code for the others sites file to be deleted? I’m not doubting what your saying happened, its just your steps in part 7 don’t have you performing any actions in Duplicator and yet your saying that Duplicator is the process removing the files? I guess I’m still confused with your logic…

Thxs