Support

Please attach a ZIP file containing your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue. If the file is over 2Mb, please upload it on your server and post a link to it. Without the log file we cannot help you because we can't possibly know what is going on.

I see two possible problems. One is that your backup archive seems to be larger than 2GB. The other is that your computer seems to go to sleep or otherwise disconnect from the network after approximately 15'. Since both issues seem to happen within two seconds of each other I am not sure which would be the reason for the failure. So, let's address them both.

Go to Akeeba Backup, Configuration.

Find the Archiver Engine row.

Click on the “Configure...” button next to it.

Set the “Part size for split archives” to 2000 MB. You need to do that because your backup is beyond that size. Depending on how PHP was compiled, it may be unable to correctly handle files larger than 2GB minus one byte (that's not a random number; it's 2^31 - 1, i.e. the biggest positive integer which can be stored in a 32-bit variable because PHP can be compiled with 32-bit intrinsic integer size instead of 64-bit).

From the top of the page click on Save & Close.

Start taking a new backup. Make sure that you keep the tab running the backup active and that your computer does not go to sleep or gets disconnected from the network.

If the problem persists please check how much disk space you are using on your hosting account and how much is free. Since most of your site's content seems to be images, which cannot be compressed any further, you will need pretty much as much free space on your site as it's currently occupying.

If you are short on disk space and plan on storing the backups on remote storage please tell me which remote storage you'll be using and how much free space you currently have. There is a workaround for that use case. We can tell the backup to be broken into files smaller than 2000MB each and upload them as soon as they are ready.

If you have plenty of disk space do tell me how much space your site consumes, how much free space you have and give me a link to the new log file of the latest backup you took. There's a third, less likely possibility about what could be causing the backup to fail.

I am missing the information I asked for in the last paragraph of my previous reply. Let me remind you:

Both the Core (free) and Pro (paid) version use the same backup engine. The only difference is that the Pro version also has more features, e.g. the ability to send your file to remote storage. However, I do not see the backup reaching that point.

I need you to send me the backup log file from the backup you ran after you changed the part size. Comparing it with the previous log file will help me understand what is going on. Please do remember that without a log file I don't know what your server is doing and I can't help you.

OK, there is a significant change. Instead of running for 15' and stopping at roughly 2GB it's now running for one hour and 15' and it's already at 7.6GB.

The way the log stops abruptly tells me that something external to PHP is killing the backup at this point. Assuming that Hetzner really gives you unlimited disk space the problem is that they kill the backup script because of resource usage. In this case you can edit the Configuration page again and set Maximum Execution Time 30 seconds, Minimum Execution Time 10 seconds and leave the Execution Time Bias to 75%.

You may also want to set this backup profile to be a full site backup, not an incremental one. Check the documentation to understand why incremental backups will be a problem if you don't have a relatively recent full site backup (we do explain why you should have two backup profiles, one full and one incremental).

Please make sure your computer does not go to sleep or gets disconnected from the network while the backup is running.

If the backup fails to run again please send me the new log file. It will help me understand if the problem is resource usage or if your host actually has a storage limit even if they advertise it as unlimited. In my experience, no host ever gives you truly unlimited disk space since file storage is finite and expensive. In most cases they give you a pretty large limit (typically in the several GB area) which seems "infinite" for most people and whenever you hit that limit you can ask them for more, explaining why you need extra space. Seeing that your site already uses up 10GB (plus whatever your database and other system files are using) and the backup is at another near 7GB when it's killed I am thinking that the problem is that the "infinite" disk space is actually limited around 20GB.