Bug report and a work-around

Support
1

I just joined to report this bug. I feel comfortable saying it’s a bug because I can replicate it on my machine multiple times, in addition to replicating it on three Macs.

Mac version:

version 1.41 I was unable to restore backups/archives or blueprints, it would always hang on ‘creating site container’

The problem seems to be when I don’t use my home directory. On two Mac Pro’s I used another hard drive in the machine as the path, this works fine for creating wordpress sites (I say this loosely as it has had some problems, but it works and I don’t want to digress.)

However, when trying to restore a backup made in ‘local’ or a ‘blueprint’ made in ‘local’ it just won’t create the container. I have tried and tried and tried and tried some more. Updated to 1.42 and it still continued to do this.

Finally, I decided to use my home directory on the main hard drive. Ta-da, it works. I am embarrassed to tell you how many hours I worked on this. I have tested this on three machines now, and it works and breaks in all three machines.

• To save time and some back and forth, my folder on the second hard drive has the same read write permissions as in the home directory.

• When trying to create the restore or using the bluepring, I am writing to the same path where the original working wordpress site was blueprinted from. So clearly the application has access to writing to this directory.

Hope this helped someone else. I hope this can be fixed in the next release of this handy application. As you may or may not know, many operating system drives are not exactly the largest out there in the Mac world.

I have looked in the ‘local’ community and I know others are having this problem. They have been asked to provide log reports. They have been asked to uninstall and reinstall. This worked for me on three computers which all used internal secondary hard drives.

Thank you.

2

So, can support tell me if they have looked into this or are looking into this?

3

Hi Theo,

Thanks for the detailed write-up!

Were you using something under /Volumes? If so, that should be mounted automatically. You may need to create a fresh site that uses /Volumes prior to importing.

4

Hello, thank you for getting back to me. I don’t fully understand your statement about “Were you using something under /volumes prior to importing”.

If I use the following:

/Users/theo/FLYwheel/sites

it works. Regardless of where I created the fresh site. The Blueprints are saved in LIBRARY folder, so I’m not really sure what you mean. Regardless of what drive /volume I created the fresh sites, it will only blueprint restore to the primary drive.

So, lets use your name for example:

/Users/clay/documents/websites-local/root-of-all-local-sites

If I used the above path, it would work to crate fresh sites and restore sites such as from blueprints, it would work. Regardless of where the original site was created.

If however I use the following path

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local

I can create fresh websites here. But if I try to restore a blueprint to this path, it won’t create the container/folder. It will just hang forever. I have tried 23048320984032 times and it just wont work. I have checked to make sure that the /volume and directories have the same read/write permissions as “/Users/clay/documents/websites-local/root-of-all-local-sites” but it just wont work.

So, again, I have a blueprint that is saved… lets call it “test”. If I change the:

“default site path” to:

/Users/clay/documents/websites-local/root-of-all-local-sites

The blueprint restore will work. I’ll end up with the following path:

/Users/clay/documents/websites-local/root-of-all-local-sites/test

If however I try to restore with the ‘default site path’ to"

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local-folder/all-sites-inside-here

It doesn’t work. It won’t create the “test” directory. I even tried helping it along and put the test folder in the path above so it looks like this before attempting to restore the blueprint:

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local-folder/all-sites-inside-here/test

But it hangs on the “creating container” part of the restore. It even deletes the test folder. So, after forcing the process, the path looks like this:

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local-folder/all-sites-inside-here

instead of the way it was in advance when I tried to help it along:

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local-folder/all-sites-inside-here\test

AGAIN, I can create new sites to the path:

/Volumes/Hard-Drive-Name/FLYwheel-Local-folder/all-sites-inside-here

But blueprints or backups created with ‘local’ will not restore to that directory. The blueprints and backups however will restore to the user folder REGARDLESS or where they resided when first crated.

I know some of this message may have been over-kill. But I trying my best to explain in the greatest of detail to avoid the back and forth and of course to get this resolved.

For right now, my work around is to use my primary drive which contains the operating system and my user profile… this however is not ideal. I really need to be able to save to another hard drive etc… such as a thumb drive or external hard drive, or an internal hard drive for that matter.

Thank you, I hope I have broken this down clearly.

Kind regards,
Theo

5

Sorry about the bold text, not sure how I did that. Not YELLING and mad… I must have clicked on something by accident. Been up all day working, off to bed now.

Thank you.

6

Hello?

It’s been days now. I have received one response, and I’m not quite sure what they wanted to say in their response. I am getting the feeling that this forum isn’t monitored much or my question isn’t considered relevant or a big problem.

Can anyone add any additional thoughts on my post?

Thank you.

7

Bumo

Is anyone able to comment on this further?

8

So… I guess it is safe to say that I have concerns moving forward with your product. Days have passed and not a single response. A shame really.

Can anyone from the development team comment on my scenario?

9

I think you’ve answered your own question here.

It seems that, at this point in the development, we need to keep all our files in our user’s home directory.

I do think you have a valid point and I hope that a future version of Local addresses this issue, but clearly at this point in time we need to alter our workflows to accommodate.

10

Afragen, are you a user or on the development team? I didn’t answer my own question, I provided a work-around and reasons why it’s not ideal. For the most part I had no problem with your comments till you said “I don’t think you have a valid point” … Don’t have a valid point?

Not flaming, not trolling… but please tell me your just a user and not a developer… making statements like that? You used words like “accomodate” yeah, because I found a work around. The software lets your choose the destination folder. This is clearly a bug. I gave reason why the user root isn’t ideal. NO VALID POINT, ummm, ok. Again, please tell me your not a developer on this project.

Because the two answers I got are completely off base, SORRY. I appreciate your comments but I think you should reconsider your choice of words… also look at how long it has been since I opened this thread.

Good day and thanks for your comments, but I believe I do have a VALID point.

:slight_smile:

11

@Theo

Please re-read. I said you do have a point. And I am just another user.

Take care.

Andy

12

@Theo Thank you for this work around. I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why a Fresh site would work but not adding new one from blueprint. :wink:

Cheers

13

@afragen, my mistake, then. I very well may have read your comment incorrectly, was not my intention to come across negativly. :slight_smile:

@mjranim, I’m glad my thread was able to help you out. It also reassures me now that I’m not crazy LOL. :slight_smile:

To the support staff, yesterday I officially retired this software for now. A real pity to be honest. The theory and design are very good. I eluded to the fact that things were a little unstable, but didn’t want to digress. However after two separate sites gave me PHP errors I am through, I feel safe saying it is ‘local’ – but I won’t do any further bug testing as it is clear that this group isn’t being monitored by staff :frowning:

I will attempt quickly to explain why I believe your app at present is flakey:

I got a huge php error message on my blog roll page and on a separate website on the archive page. I immediately cloned the site and moved it to a liver server, error went away.

I took the same backup and installed it on MAMP setting the PHP and SQL to the same versions used in ‘local’ the problem went away.

I took the same backup and installed it on bitnami - yup, problem went away.

Tried my backup on xamp - yup, you guessd it, it worked.

I then went back to ‘local’ and used the backup, the problem resurfaced. I tried all the versions of PHP and SQL in mix and match combinations… error still was there.

I then borrowed a friends laptop that has never used PHP or SQL for web development and installed ‘local’ – the problem persisted.

So, I will keep an eye out on this project in the future, but I think I won’t be back to try it for at least another six months. I will only consider this if the forum where bug reports actually has moderators that are active.

I will not put any more time into this product, as I cannot get a single clear answer on even if they have read this and are working on it.

If they won’t address the first problem, why would I assume they would address the second.

I only write this here in hopes to help someone else. I personally have moved on from LOCAL due to these reasons. But if you are experiencing problems and are starting to second guess if this software is the problem, I think you might be right.

This software very well may be amazing in the future, but for right now, I think it isn’t mature enough for serious builders and developers as it appears there is just too may bugs to have in a production environment.

Thank you LOCAL – I wish you future success with this product.

1 Like
14

Theo,

We really appreciate the honest feedback!

If you ever get the chance, can you share that PHP error so we can look into it? This may be as simple as local lacking a PHP extension that the other stacks provide.

Also, C:\Users is what Docker Machine mounts by default. We 100% intend on allowing sites to be added outside of C:\Users on Windows but that wasn’t a high priority during this point in the beta.

15

Clay, I am on a MAC. Not sure why your referencing a directory structure for a windows computer.

If this problem is the same on windows and known as it is on the Mac… and isn’t considered a priority… maybe the team should remove the option to change the path to a path that isn’t supported. This isn’t documented and took many many days to even get a response.

My advise, remove the functionality or have a notice somewhere in the application so that people don’t lose hours of their day or week.

Thank you,
Theo

16

Sorry for the misunderstanding!

/Volumes is supported on Mac but there is an edge case where moving your /Users directory to another volume can create some issues. We’ve been looking into it and hope to have a solution for this soon.