Background

If you notice that some of your scheduled backup processes have stalled and are no longer progressing, they need to be restarted to continue creating backups.

Please note that backups might take some time to complete (depending on your site and server speed). Give it some time before you decide that the scheduled backup process needs to be restarted.

When to restart scheduled backups?

There are many reasons why scheduled backups should be restarted. Some of them go beyond the scope of the Prime Mover PRO plugin and even the WordPress platform itself. Below are some reasons:

  • Your server restarts while the scheduled backup is running. This clears up the memory and running processes, therefore resulting in stalled backups.
  • Your hosting executes a scheduled server maintenance. These maintenance tasks can be anything. From installing new software, updating old software, and cleaning up your server. Once the running site is refreshed from these updates – any running processes including automatic backup gets stalled and needs to be restarted.
  • You establish a backup timeout that exceeds the timeout of your hosting server. For instance, your hosting timeout is 60 seconds, yet you have set it to 180 seconds. Your host could silently kill these processes without putting any errors in the logs. The solution would be to set a conservative backup timeout and restart the backup process.
  • You scheduled too many backups to run at the same time, so you used more hosting resources than you should have. Your hosts can kill them quietly. The solution is to spread out your scheduled backups and not let them all run at the same time.

Before you can restart scheduled backups

  • Make sure that the site you need to restart the automatic backups has the PRO license activated on it. Otherwise, you will not be able to set and save the settings below.
  • This tutorial assumes automatic backup is already globally enabled before you can restart any process. You will know that the automatic backup is globally enabled by going to Prime Mover PRO -> Settings -> Backup management -> Automatic backup.
  • Automatic backups are enabled globally if it is checked. Check it out first and save it if it’s not checked.

Steps to safely restart automatic backups

  • Login to your WordPress site as administrator (network administrator if multisite).
  • [If your site is multisite] – Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Event Viewer. Confirm and get the blog ID of the affected site that you want to restart the scheduled backups.
  • [If your site is multisite] – Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Toolbox. Enter the blog ID of the affected sub-site. Unchecked ‘Enable automatic backup‘ checkbox and then click the “Save” button. This will disable the automatic backup only for that specific multisite sub-site.
  • [If your site is single-site] – Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Settings -> Backup management -> Automatic backup. Unchecked ‘Enable automatic backup‘ checkbox and then click the “Save” button. This will disable the automatic backup for your WordPress single-site.
  • [If your site is multisite] Click the “Package Manager” link in the breadcrumb navigation above as indicated in this screenshot:
  • [If your site is single-site] Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Packages.
  • In the package manager page of the site – click “Refresh packages” button. This will clear and delete any artifacts or incomplete packages.
  • On the package manager page of the site – click the “Scheduled backup settings” button as indicated in this screenshot:
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the Sites Tools / Scheduled backup settings page for that site.
  • Click the following 3 red buttons in the following order:
    • “Clear auto backup log“
    • “Clear error log“
    • “Clear autobackup init key“

This is what the buttons look like:

The purpose of these buttons is to clear the logs and initialization keys for which we need to cleanly restart the process.

  • You are now ready to re-enable/restart the scheduled backup process. Make sure that the automatic backup settings are globally enabled. Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Settings -> Backup management -> Automatic backup. And make sure this is checked like this one and click “Save”:
  • Go to Prime Mover PRO -> Toolbox.
  • [If your site is multisite] Enter the blog ID of the affected site where you want automatic backup to be restarted.
  • [required] [If your site is multisite] Go to the Top of the Sites Tools / Scheduled backup settings page and re-check the Enable automatic backup checkbox and click “Save“. This is what it looks like:
  • [required] Under “Backup options” – make sure to set this and save it as well.
  • [required] Make sure to set also “Backup schedule” and save it.
  • [Optional tips for multisite ] If you are scheduling backups for several sites in your multisite – don’t schedule them in the same time because running backups consume server resources. Please spread out your backup process in different schedules to avoid running them together. This distributes your server resource usage efficiently which is beneficial for your site. You can assign as many custom schedules as you want your sites.
  • [required] Since you are restarting the process – you might want to be very conservative with your backup timeouts. To avoid hitting a timeout which could disrupt your process – assign the shortest timeout possible. Under “Retry timeout options” – set timeout to 20 seconds. This will ensure that it will run as most hosting configurations will have server timeout higher than 20 seconds.
  • Confirm that the backup schedule is now active. To do this – go to Prime Mover PRO -> Event Viewer. You should see the two sets of events for that site (one for the main schedule and one for the retry checking). This is what it looks like:

If you see the above 2 entries for your site. Congratulations your schedule backup is now restarted! Please wait for some time until it fires in your set schedule.

Contact tech support

If your scheduled backups is still not working after restarting it – please open a ticket to technical support. To assist you in the fastest way possible – please provide your WordPress site login (network admin credentials if multisite) so we can immediately check the problem directly in your affected site.

If your site is multisite – please specify the affected sub-site URL or blog ID so we will know what site has issues.

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