Knowledge Base

WP Toolkit Cloning hangs or stops after 60 seconds on a Plesk server

WordPress instance example.com cannot be cloned, process hangs at 51% or fails with the error:

WP-CLI command has not finished working in 60 seconds, so it was terminated. Usually this means that there are problems with WordPress instance WordPress instance #12 ('https://staging.example.com') itself, for example it could be infected with malware. Check the wp-config.php file of the instance for potential malware code.
Below errors can be found in /var/log/plesk/panel.log:

[2019-06-05 19:24:03.957] ERR [1] '/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/filemng' 'jdoe' 'exec' '/var/www/vhosts/example.com/staging.example.com' '/opt/plesk/php/7.2/bin/php' '-d' 'safe_mode=off' '-d' 'display_errors=off' '-d' 'opcache.enable_cli=off' '-d' 'open_basedir=' '-d' 'error_reporting=341' '-c' '/var/www/vhosts/system/staging.example.com/etc/php.ini' '/usr/local/psa/admin/plib/modules/wp-toolkit/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/php/boot-fs.php' '--path=/var/www/vhosts/example.com/staging.example.com' 'search-replace' 'https://example.com' 'https://staging.example.com' '--precise' '--all-tables' failed with code 15.
PHP handler of the main domain of the subscription is PHP 7.2 or 7.3;

Issue in the function `search-replace` from WP-CLI utility in combination with PHP 7.2 & 7.3.

Two workarounds are possible:

Log into Plesk.
Create the subdomain where to clone the instance (E.G: staging.example.com).
Go to Domains > staging.example.com > PHP Settings and switch PHP version to 7.1 for example.
Go to WordPress > example.com > Clone
Check Use existing domain or subdomain and select the new domain staging.example.com as Target in the list, the database name can be optionally changed.
Once cloning finishes, go again to Domains (Or as customer: Websites & Domains) > staging.example.com > PHP Settings and switch back the PHP version to 7.2.

If cloning still fails, clone WordPress manually:

Connect to the server via SSH.
Create the subdomain where to clone the instance (E.G: staging.example.com):

# plesk bin subdomain --create staging -domain example.com -www-root /staging.example.com -empty-document-root true

Note: In case the target instance is not a subdomain of the source instance, run this command instead:

# plesk bin site --create staging.example.com -webspace-name example.com -hosting true -www-root /staging.example.com -empty-document-root true
Copy the files from the source instance to the target folder:

# cp -pr /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/* /var/www/vhosts/example.com/staging.example.com/
Replace the source URL by the target URL in all these files:

# for i in $(grep -rl "example.com" /var/www/vhosts/example.com/staging.example.com/); do sed -i "s/example.com/staging.example.com/g" $i; done
Find the source database details:

# cat /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-config.php | egrep 'DB_NAME|DB_USER|DB_PASSWORD|DB_HOST'
define('DB_NAME', 'example-db…