PROBLEM Backup: connection times out, bad zip file

[Tania]

GSCMS v3.3.4
Plugins:

I've just move a site from my host to another, following the instructions in the wiki.

All works fine, except the backup (which worked just fine on my host). When I try to create a Website archive Firefox reports that the connection was reset. I go back into the backup and there are 4 files, all 4mg. I saved one of the files and the name is:
...backups_zip_2014-10-30-0448_51_archive.zip.mnaxBG

What is this .mnaxBG? If I rename the file to .zip and try to unzip (7ZIP) it, I get an error that it cannot be opened.

Website healthcheck shows all OK, including ZIP. PHPINFO shows that ZIP is enabled.

I flushed caches both in GSCMS and in Firefox. Same problem. Tried in Chrome and got "Unable to load the webpage because the server sent no data.
Error code: ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE"

Anyone have any ideas?

PS: I just reloaded the admin and now the backup shows no files at all. I did not delete what was there before. The backups/zip folder shows all the attempted backup files there, but they all have a weird extension after the .zip as I mentioned above.

The individual pages get backed up properly.

Thanks in advance!

[shawn_a]

This is an ancient issue
https://github.com/GetSimpleCMS/GetSimpleCMS/issues/285

No one knows what the problem is, it is very hard to reproduce.

No idea what that mnax is, but when ziparchive is not available on your system we do call some local shell commands like zip via our own ziparchive class, and if that fails we call tar -cvzf

The issue suggests to something perhaps dropping our ajax wait and reloading the page causing several calls, but this makes no sense.

Try a different browser?
Check error logs for php timeouts?

[Tania]

This is an ancient issue
https://github.com/GetSimpleCMS/GetSimpleCMS/issues/285

No one knows what the problem is, it is very hard to reproduce.

No idea what that mnax is, but when ziparchive is not available on your system we do call some local shell commands like zip via our own ziparchive class, and if that fails we call tar -cvzf

The issue suggests to something perhaps dropping our ajax wait and reloading the page causing several calls, but this makes no sense.

Try a different browser?
Check error logs for php timeouts?

Thanks, Shawn.

I see you guys are working on this, and if you can't figure it out, then I certainly can't, with my limited knowledge.

I'll just suggest to the site owner that he does a backup via his cPanel for now.

[shawn_a]

yeah as you can see this is over 2 years old, but such a rare problem it has been hard to reproduce in order to fix.

[Tania]

yeah as you can see this is over 2 years old, but such a rare problem it has been hard to reproduce in order to fix.

Thanks again.

If I discover anything new (different error message, etc), do you want to know about it? Here or on Github?

[shawn_a]

either is fine

one thing we have considered testing is bumping up the php timeout and see if that makes a difference.