zero size backups

[Red G. Brown]

When I try to get backups through the SMF admin system, I get no errors, but I get a zero size backup file. Apparently this has been happening since January, so I have no recent  backups. Once again, I got no errors, so I didn't know the backups were bad until I needed them. The forum isn't big, it only has about 9000 posts. What's wrong, and how to fix it?

[kat]

I wouldn't bother.

There's no way to restore the backups from within SMF.

So, why not go to your site's CPanel>Files>Backups and do it from there?

You can do both the "Home directory" (Your site) and the database.

You can restore, from there, too.

[Red G. Brown]

It's fast and easy to MAKE backups using SMF (and FTP to get attachments and avatars). Not every system I might restore to has cpanel, so I've just been going the simple route via SMF. It sounds like it can't be trusted? I suppose I really ought to have a nightly automatic backup script anyway...

[kat]

Ah.

I didn't know we were talking multiple backups.

Even so, as I said, there's no way to restore the backup, from within SMF. So, you'd have to go the CPanel (Or whatever) route to restore, anyway.

Do you have any mods installed?

[SlammedDime]

Do any errors get logged in your forum or system error log?

[Red G. Brown]

There are no errors. I was expecting to find something.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

When I try to get backups through the SMF admin system, I get no errors, but I get a zero size backup file. Apparently this has been happening since January, so I have no recent  backups. Once again, I got no errors, so I didn't know the backups were bad until I needed them. The forum isn't big, it only has about 9000 posts. What's wrong, and how to fix it?

The backup function has some nasty limitations that start occurring when your database grows bigger.
You may find the actual limit it is hitting, if you browse your servers error logs - and this may allow you to override the limits, but
the best way to get backups after the Admin CP backup starts failing, is to do it directly from your hosting control panels tools like Phpmyadmin, or with a staggered backup tool like Mysqldumper - either of which are usually able to automatically avoid those limits.