Unable to pull sites from flywheel that haven't been pulled before

What issue or error are you experiencing?

If my coworker or myself attempt to pull a site we haven’t pulled to local before it gets stuck on “packing up…” stage. If we try to pull a site we’ve pulled before then it works fine.


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

Just attempt to pull a site from local that you haven’t pulled before


System Details

  • Local Version:
    Version 9.2.0+6762
  • Operating System (OS) and OS version:
    Mac OS 15.2

Local Logs

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

local-lightning.log (790.2 KB)


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 @coreyallen

Could you share the site name? If you’d rather not put it here I can DM you! I just want to take a look at it from the Flywheel side and see if anything stands out.

As a workaround, can you download a backup and direct import it?

DM sent let me know if there’s anything else

Testing downloading a backup now

I got your DM @coreyallen and checked that site out and it looks like it is over 17 GB in size. While we don’t have a hard limit on the size of a site that can be pulled or pushed with Local, sites that are 5 GB or larger are more likely to encounter issues or timeout limitations while utilizing Local Connect. That’s not to say sites around this size or larger can’t be pushed or pulled, but results may vary.

The workarounds for larger sites are going to be to direct import a backup instead of pulling, and for pushes you can use Flywheel’s free migration plugin which will work from Local to Flywheel.

Are any of the other sites having issues larger like this one?

I’ll take a look and see, I can delete some stuff and then test pulling again

It looks like there is a backup directory in there from Updraft taking up the majority of the space. With that offloaded you should be in business! The best way to remove it would be via SFTP

Disabling or removing the plugin alone won’t remove those backups

Coworker also had the same issue with the site that ends with NZ instead of AU that I DM’d and that one is less than 1GB, I just asked her to retest to confirm

I took a look at that site, and while it is considerably smaller, there are over 30 backup files stored in /updraft, mostly zips. Sometimes extra backup directories can confuse the Local import and lead to issues. I’d recommend offloading these as well and then testing a pull with that gone.

Generally speaking, if you continue using Updraft for these or other sites I’d recommend moving backups to external storage like your own Cloud accounts. It will help prevent site’s from getting bloated and Flywheel pestering you about going over on storage overages and then it will also make things like Local Connect, Flywheel backups, or Staging jobs smoother. Flywheel stores up to 30 days of recent backups for you as well you can access within the dashboard.

Thanks, seems to have been an issue with updraft as we have it set to delete local backups but still kept them. Just confirmed with my coworker NZ did pull to local it just took a while. Thanks so much for the help.

1 Like

Sure thing @coreyallen! Glad we could narrow down the culprit here.

1 Like