Backups Troubleshooting

You can configure notifications for your backup status. If you have selected "After every backup" or "Only on failure" you will receive a notification if your backup fails.

Common Error Messages and Workarounds

ERROR: Unable to connect to FTP server (incorrect user or pass)
ERROR: Unable to connect to SFTP server (incorrect user or pass)

The username or password provided for the connection is incorrect.

ERROR: Unable to complete. Disconnected from server 3 times in a row. Please check with your hosting company.

The FTP/SFTP connection dropped 3 consecutive times. This is caused by a server timeout or connection issue on the hosting side. You may try switching FTP to SFTP.

Server timeouts may happen when your website has too many files or the server is overloaded. Usually the solution is to raise the default webserver settings, PHP handler or/and PHP settings for timeouts and to skip bloated directories.

ERROR: Unable to validate your site home directory (sucuri backup test failed).
ERROR: Unable to validate your site home directory
ERROR: FTP home directory: your_directroy doesn't exist.
ERROR: Unable to connect to your website. We tried '/dir_name' as home directory. Your Firewall, a plugin or .htaccess settings might be blocking us.

The FTP/SFTP credentials are either incorrect or the website is offline or does not live on the FTP/SFTP server provided. If you\’re using a CDN/WAF/proxy make sure it\’s not blocking the backups server. Inserting the code below at the top of your .htaccess file may help if a redirection is the cause of the issue.

# Allow Sucuri Backups
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">
 RewriteRule ^sucuri-(.*).php$ - [L]
</ifmodule>

WARNING: No database found for your site.
WARNING: Cannot read config file your-config.php, check file permissions. No database backup created!
WARNING: Auto-detecting database info from your-config.php failed. No database backup created!
WARNING: Unable to select database your-config.php. Incorrect permissions for user your-config.php
WARNING: Unable to connect to database using your-config.php
ERROR: Unable to connect to database.

The backup was unable to find or connect to the database so you\’ll need to configure the Database Backup with a cron job or scheduled task or using the Manual option.
This could also indicate the Backup process was interrupted. Make sure your web server, PHP handler and PHP settings timeout values are high enough as well.

WARNING: Unable to upload script for database backup. Please check permissions.

Unless your hosting plan or server disk is full, this happens when the "docroot", such as public_html for example, does not have full read/write permissions. It could also indicate the FTP/SFTP connection worked but the website is not acessible for the backups server.

WARNING: No temporary database dump found for your site. Please double check your settings.

No database dump was found at "sucuri-backups" folder. Make sure your Cron Job/Scheduled Tasks has the correct credentials and is saving the database dump in the correct location.

ERROR: Unable to connect to FTP server (timeout)

The FTP server provided is either incorrect or blocking the connection of the backups server. Check the "FTP hostname" field and make sure the backups server IP address is whitelisted.

WARNING: Invalid database backup zip.

Make sure your Cron Job/Scheduled Tasks is working, this is usually experienced when the dump file is 0 KB in size.

WARNING: Unable to move database zip from downloading folder.  
WARNING: Unable to move database zip from custom downloading folder.

The website folder is probably not writable. Make sure the document root (e.g. public_html) has full read/write permissions.

WARNING: Unable to backup your database

The database backup didn\’t work and is usually followed by another error message.

WARNING: Unable to clean database backup temp dump files!
WARNING: Unable to clean backup temp script!
WARNING: Unable to create database backup file. Permission denied.
ERROR: Unable to upload script for test. Please check permissions.

The website folder or "sucuri-backups" directory is probably not writable, make sure they have full read/write permissions.

WARNING: There was an error querying the database.
ERROR: #1062: Duplicate entry 'XXX' for key 'PRIMARY'

The database is not returning correctly. Please peform a database maintenance to make sure everything is correct with the database. If you are trying to auto restore the database, you must download the database backup and perform the restore manually.

WARNING: Unable to connect to database (database) Error 1045: Access denied for user 'user'@'server' (using password: YES)

The credentials provided for the database backup are incorrect or the database server is not allowing the connection from the backups server.

ERROR: Unable to complete. Your site plan reached 100%, and your backups will be now stopped. Please upgrade your plan or contact support for help.
ERROR: Unable to complete. Error processing your plan. Please contact support for help.
ERROR: Internal error (unable to create directory). Please contact support for help.

For this backup system issue, please contact our support.