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[The Hub] Site down, removed from Hub and backups missing

I had a web site b****g.net that has been down for maybe a month. I had a backup in the Hub but b****g.net was not there anymore. I have added the site again in the hope of they would appear again – but no. So, are the backups just gone? Please advice.

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 8:27:49
  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Elund

    I hope you’re well today and thank you for your question!

    All the managed backups, if they were activated and created, are stored in The Hub and would be available even if the site is removed – from your “My Account” page. However, they are not stored indefinitely: if the site was disconnected for over a month or there was no managed backups created for longer than month, older backups would be automatically removed.

    I can see that you have re-connected the site to the hub just yesterday but are you sure that you have removed it in less than 30 days back? Also, were the managed backups actually running on the site and created systematically?

    Let me know, please. Meanwhile, I also asked our admins to check your account in our back-end so we’ll update you here as soon as they got back to me with information.

    Kind regards,

    Adam

  • Elund
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Hello Adam,

    The site was shutdown by the hosting company without any warnings and to be honest I don’t remember if I had set up the backup to run automatically. But I wasn’t aware of that you would remove the site from the hub and delete the backups :slight_frown:

    I have found a one year old backup on my computer. Can you provide me with information about how to restore this backup? And Can this backup be restored on a new server?

    Best regards,

    Elund

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Elund,

    If Hub is unable to communicate with the site for a longer time it will remove it from the list of registered sites as the site is inactive.

    This will not, however, affect existing backups as they are stored for 30 days from their creation date, regardless if the site is connected or not.

    It seems that your site didn’t have any backups in last 30 days and that’s why there’s no existing one shown :slight_frown:

    I have found a one year old backup on my computer. Can you provide me with information about how to restore this backup? And Can this backup be restored on a new server?

    Did you find a Snapshot backup or some other kind of a backup file?

    If it’s a Snapshot backup is it Managed Backup file or regular Snapshot, because restoring those is a different process?

    Let us know so we can assist you further with getting the site up and running again.

    Best regards,

    Predrag

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Elund

    Thank you for response!

    Yes, this can be restored to a new server. The process is as follows:

    – upload the “full_backup-……zip” file to the server where you want the site to be restored; note: it should be an empty folder – there should be no existing WP install there or other files

    – upload the “snapshot-installer.php” file from inside the “277089_snapshot….zip” file to that same location on the server

    – create an empty database on that new server (and note down it’s access credentials: host, db name, db user, db password, port number – if necessary)

    – visit the “domain.com/snapshot-installer.php” in your browser, where “domain.com” is the URL of your site on that new server.

    The installer script would ask you to update db credentials (there’ll be a form for this) and if everything’s fine, there’ll be a big “deploy” button. Once you click on it, the restoration process will begin and entire site should be restored.

    Kind regards,

    Adam

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Elund

    I’m glad to hear it worked for you!

    Yes, there are sometimes issues with that kind of characters (national/language-specific characters). It doesn’t happen always and is somehow specific to the server and db configuration of source/target server.

    I know, however, that our developers are aware of that and it should be addressed in future to avoid even a slightest chance of that happening again.

    Best regards,

    Adam