Pulling deleting my whole site!

What issue or error are you experiencing?

When pulling from WP Engine I encounter an error

Uh-oh! Unable to import site.

Error: Local was unable to import any SQL files. Failed imports:

• /app/public/_wpeprivate/autoload.sql

It then proceeds to delete my whole site folder!

Luckily I have it on a Git repository

Irrelevant if it can import the SQL file or not it should NOT delete my whole folder, which could contain work that I haven’t synced yet

I pull regularly and have not encountered this before, I just updated to the latest and still teh issue is there


What steps can be taken to replicate the issue? Feel free to include screenshots, videos, etc

Tried it numerous times
I’ve created a site, and then clicked pull and only pulling the database from WP Engine


System Details

  • Local Version:

  • Version 9.2.7+6877

  • Operating System (OS) and OS version:

  • MacOS 15.5


Local Logs

Attach your Local Logs here (Help Doc - Retrieving Local’s Log)

{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using MACHINENAME.local. Set the ‘ServerName’ directive globally to suppress this message”,“process”:“httpd”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.048Z”}
{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.272663Z 0 [System] [MY-010116] [Server] %%userDataPath%%/lightning-services/mysql-8.0.16+6/bin/darwin/bin/mysqld (mysqld 8.0.16) starting as process 86932”,“process”:“mysql”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.510Z”}
{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.273713Z 0 [Warning] [MY-013243] [Server] --character-set-server: The character set UTF8MB3 is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please consider using UTF8MB4 instead.”,“process”:“mysql”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.511Z”}
{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.274357Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010159] [Server] Setting lower_case_table_names=2 because file system for %%site.runData%%/mysql/data/ is case insensitive”,“process”:“mysql”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.511Z”}
{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.497878Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010068] [Server] CA certificate ca.pem is self signed.”,“process”:“mysql”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.511Z”}
{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.510843Z 0 [System] [MY-010931] [Server] %%userDataPath%%/lightning-services/mysql-8.0.16+6/bin/darwin/bin/mysqld: ready for connections. Version: ‘8.0.16’ socket: ‘%%site.runData%%/mysql/mysqld.sock’ port: 10299 MySQL Community Server - GPL.”,“process”:“mysql”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:25:41.511Z”}
{“class”:“SshService”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“Warning: Permanently added ‘WPESITENAME.ssh.wpengine.net’ (RSA) to the list of known hosts.\r\n”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:26:07.864Z”}
{“class”:“ImporterWPE”,“level”:“error”,“message”:“Unable to import /Users/USERNAME/Documents/http/*SITENAME/app/public/_wpeprivate/autoload.sql”,“stack”:“Error: ERROR 1062 (23000) at line 946: Duplicate entry ‘965-???-0’ for key ‘PRIMARY’\n at %%appPath%%/main/_helpers/importSQLFile.js:112:19\n at Generator.next ()\n at fulfilled (%%appPath%%/main/_helpers/importSQLFile.js:28:58)”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:27:30.254Z”}
{“class”:“ImporterWPE”,“failedImports”:[“/Users/USERNAME/Documents/http/SITENAME/app/public/_wpeprivate/autoload.sql”],“level”:“error”,“message”:“Local was unable to import any SQL files.”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:27:30.255Z”}
{“class”:“ImporterWPE”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“Unable to import site.”,“stack”:“Error: Local was unable to import any SQL files. Failed imports: \n\n• /app/public/_wpeprivate/autoload.sql\n at ImporterWPE. (%%appPath%%/main/importer/Importer.js:407:23)\n at Generator.throw ()\n at rejected (%%appPath%%/main/importer/Importer.js:29:65)”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:27:30.255Z”}
{“class”:“SshService”,“level”:“warn”,“message”:“Warning: Permanently added ‘WPESITENAME.ssh.wpengine.net’ (RSA) to the list of known hosts.\r\n”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2025-08-21T13:27:43.390Z”}


Security Reminder
Local does a pretty good job of scrubbing private info from the logs and the errors it produces, however there’s always the possibility that something private can come through. Because these are public forums, always review the screenshots you are sharing to make sure there isn’t private info like passwords being displayed.

Hi @andytela!

How large is the site/DB?

As a workaround, can you import it manually instead without issue?

In order to troubleshoot further, we’d love to see your full Local Log. I can see you’ve redacted some of the details in the snippet you’ve shared. If you’d rather not share this publicly we can do it over DM or you can reach out to WP Engine support and have them spin up a ticket internally.

Keep us posted and we’d be happy to help further!

It’s not big, it’s only 6Mb

I can import it in fine
If I try to run a search and replace I get

There has been a critical error on this website.Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress. There has been a critical error on this website.

I’ve retried with a fresh export from WPE this morning and it’s all worked fine, so there must have been some issue with the SQL

My main concern is that the app is deleting the whole site because it cannot import the SQL

That for me is a massive issue, it should not delete the whole folder just because of a SQL error

1 Like

Completely agree with you, @andytela, and sorry that you encountered this.

I’ll see if I can reproduce this, thank you for your report.

1 Like

We were able to reproduce this.

A fix is now available in Local 9.2.8 to prevent it from happening again:

https://localwp.com/releases/9.2.8/

Sorry that you ran into this, @andytela, and thank you very much for the report.

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