Local UI shows cloned sites as running even when stopped

[fourwhitesocks]

[Moderator Note]

There is a workaround here: Local UI shows cloned sites as running even when stopped - #4 by burt

The fix involves cleaning up incorrect data within the sites.json file which can be found within Local’s configuration folder for you specific OS:

• MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Local/sites.json
• Window: Username\AppData\Roaming\Local\sites.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Local/sites.json

---

My issue:

Kinda strange my last 2 versions of Local (5.10.5+5403) and before show some sites as running right when I open the app even tho I did not ‘start’ them, also when I click on Stop all when I’m finished it says they are stopping but they really don’t. It doesn’t seem to affect anything.

** Interesting these are always the same sites and are the last most recent sites I started.

Is this a harder tax/stress on my laptop to have all of those extra sites running?? These same sites keep running even tho I’m not doing anything with them throughout the day…

** I’m on a newer Windows 10 laptop and the latest version of Local

Thank you!

[ben.turner]

That’s definitely odd and sounds like it might be bug that another user was experiencing:

1 site is always auto-started

It’s just a UI issue: https://share.getcloudapp.com/rRujvg8B

I know you’re on Windows, and the other thread is for a Mac, but it seems like this might be an issue with Local’s UI. Can you verify that it’s just the icons that are broken and not the actual site? You might view that screencast that was shared by the other user, but in general:

1. Quit Local and open the app
2. For a site that appears already running, try clicking the “Open Site” button and see if it loads in the browser.
3. Try stopping/starting the site and again try accessing it in the browser

@fourwhitesocks

Is this a harder tax/stress on my laptop to have all of those extra sites running?

I’m guessing this is more of a visual thing and no sites are actually running. I’d still like to get to the bottom of why Local thinks those things are running, but in terms of it being hard on your computer, I don’t think that it is.

[fourwhitesocks]

Thank you for the reply! Ok so the sites do work; and not sure what you mean by the icons being ‘broken’ but if you mean that they might be green when they should be gray then yes that is what is happening.

It has to have something a little more than the icon color being triggered because at the bottom it has counted up the sites that it ‘thinks’ are running see screenshot here; this is what it looks like upon opening without me doing anything other than opening the app:

(http://prntscr.com/140gmlw)

Thanks for taking a look at it!

[burt]

I experienced this also on a recent version of Local. I found that there was some seemingly errant data in the sites.json file entry for the site that was appearing as running when Local was restarted. This consisted of additional name/value pairs after the “services” as follows:

    "__typename": "Site",
    "status": "running",
    "isStarred": true,
    "siteLastStartedTimestamp": 1615333829033,
    "oneClickAdminID": "1",
    "oneClickAdminDisplayName": "abcdsite"

The value for the “oneClickAdminDisplayName” entry was the hostname of a different site for the current site entry. It was the hostname of a site that was cloned to create the site that was appearing as running on restart.

I shut down Local, took a copy of the sites.json file, removed the extraneous data (along with the trailing comma immediately before it), and restarted Local. That solved my problem.

I suspect that the root of the issue may be related to cloning, at least in my case.

[fourwhitesocks]

Wow, Burt I also think my issue is related to cloning! I will check that out early next week and see!!

Thank you and TGIF for now

[Tommy999]

Issue Summary

I have a site cloned 3 times (for some modifications) unter different names and when I open the admin of one of these all 4 sites (“Original” and the 3 cloned) starts all. “Stop all” does not work, but I can stop them each individual, leave on which I work active. But when I then for example going to “view site” again all sites start. I think it results in bad performance when 4 sites are started, or ist this not so important?

Troubleshooting Questions

• Does this happen for all sites in Local, or just one in particular?
  = Yes, as if they are cloned from one site

• Are you able to create a new, plain WordPress site in Local and access it in a Browser?
  = Yes, always.

Replication

Just start one of the cloned sites

System Details

Newest

Windows 8.1

• Attach the Local Log. See this Community Forum post for instructions on how to do so:
  • How do I retrieve Local’s Log?

[ben.turner]

@Tommy999 – I’ve merged your topic into this one since it seems like the same issue.

@Tommy999

I think it results in bad performance when 4 sites are started, or ist this not so important?

Having the four sites active is likely not an issue since they aren’t all receiving requests at the same time. Additionally, I guessing that these other sites aren’t actually started – they just appear to be within the Local UI.

[ben.turner]

Nice work zeroing in on this issue @burt !

I was able to sort of replicate (ie, I broke Local, but I don’t know exactly what I did to break it ). I’ll keep tinkering to find reliable reproduction steps and file a bug with the Local team!

[burt]

Happy to help! Glad that you’ve been able to narrow things down a little for the devs.

[fourwhitesocks]

I second that too!

[fourwhitesocks]

@burt I looked in my local sites json file (of the affected site(s) ) and don’t see any of those settings? Is there another json file that I may be missing??

This is the json file I’m looking in: http://prntscr.com/14rf520

Thank you!

[burt]

@fourwhitesocks The file that I referred to is (on Windows) %AppData%\Roaming\Local\sites.json

Make sure that you’ve closed Local, and made a backup as well before doing anything with that file. You’ll want to have an editor that can prettify the JSON to help identify anything that doesn’t look like it belongs in the settings for the site experiencing the incorrect status.

Of course, the safest thing is to wait and see if the developers can identify and fix the issue, hopefully cleaning up any existing config problems.

[fourwhitesocks]

@burt thank you very much; I think I will take your advice and wait; it doesn’t seem to hurt anything it just kinda bugs me !

[barisan]

I wanted to chip in by saying I’m experiencing this issue, too, on mac. Updating to the latest Local version does not resolve the issue.

[fourwhitesocks]

Gosh I hope they get it on the next update then

[bobwarrick]

Local 6.1.0 + 5452 has this issue. I included a screenshot in this thread: Local 6.1.0 defect: Site shows green “running” state when the site is not actually running

[ben.turner]

I know that this was reported a while ago and a fix still isn’t here. In terms of streamlining communication, I’ve moved this topic from the “support” category to the actual “bug” category so that it can be up-voted.

[chrisdark86]

Local version: 6.3.0+5756
OS: Windows 10 Pro

The cloned sites still shows as active.