Unable to start site after cloning or changing php version

Uh Oh! Unable to start site message on both original and cloned site after cloning…
I pulled a backup of a production site on WPE to do some testing ahead of a PHP upgrade and while the site launched fine after the initial install, now that I have cloned it to make a second copy in Local neither site will launch. Same issue happened prior when attempting to simply update PHP version in local from 8.0 to 8.3 (could not revert to 8.0 either) although this time no changes were made from original import other than making a clone.
Site is a large multisite environment…


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

Maybe a socket issue?
Log entry below…

System Details

M1 Macbook Pro 32Gb ram, 1Tb ssd

  • Local Version:
    Version 9.0.4+6699
  • Operating System (OS) and OS version:
    OSX Sonoma v14.5

Local Logs

{“class”:“Process”,“level”:“verbose”,“message”:“Spawned”,“pid”:11612,“process”:“nginx”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2024-07-09T14:40:28.919Z”}
{“level”:“error”,“message”:“Database did NOT respond to ping after 15 tries.”,“service”:{},“serviceBinVersion”:{},“stack”:“Error: Command failed: %%userDataPath%%/lightning-services/mysql-8.0.16+6/bin/darwin/bin/mysqladmin ping\n\u0007mysqladmin: connect to server at ‘localhost’ failed\nerror: ‘Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘%%site.runData%%/mysql/mysqld.sock’ (2)’\nCheck that mysqld is running and that the socket: ‘%%site.runData%%/mysql/mysqld.sock’ exists!\n\n at ChildProcess.exithandler (node:child_process:422:12)\n at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:517:28)\n at ChildProcess.emit (node:domain:489:12)\n at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1098:16)\n at ChildProcess._handle.onexit (node:internal/child_process:303:5)”,“thread”:“main”,“timestamp”:“2024-07-09T14:40:37.272Z”}


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 @allen.moore

How did you “pull” the site into Local? Local Connect doesn’t work with multisite installs so curious if you used some type of migration method? We have a help guide here on building, configuring and moving multisites with Local:

I ran a backup on WPE, exported the zip archive which I imported to local- did not use Local Connect; but, interestingly note that once imported, the site on local does not indicate that it is multisite? Original is subdirectory type, not subdomain; but is large with a large number of sites (250)…

Yes, this is all expected. As with all things related to multi sites, getting this going will require a bit more manual effort as the direct import method using a backup ZIP won’t work either. You’ll have to create a multisite on Local first, and then manually move the files over as outlined here: