# Network error on backup download
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578
**Category:** Bug
**Tags:** backups
**Created:** [November 15, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578 "2025-11-15T18:49:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/1 "2025-11-15T18:49:36Z")
My co-admin told me he couldn’t download a backup from the received email because the download crashed at roughly 50%.
I tried and experienced the same. The archive download works well until it stops with “Failed - Network error”.
~~Trying to resume on Chrome returns “Failed - Unknown server error”. I had no issue the last time I downloaded backups from this server (months ago).~~ (this is expected)
Any idea?
edit, more info:
> [@Network error on backup download](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/7):
>
> I tried downloading a backup from another forum and experienced the same. Can someone try to replicate on their own instance? On both sites the download fails after 30 seconds. Moving this to #bug because I’m quite sure this is not just me.
Repro steps:
1. Download a backup from the emailed link
2. The download should fail at some point
---
### Author:  [@MaxenceC](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MaxenceC)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2025, 7:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/2 "2025-11-15T19:22:44Z")
Hi,
I’m Canapin’s co-admin 🙂
> Trying to resume on Chrome returns “Failed - Unknown server error”. I had no issue the last time I downloaded backups from this server (months ago).
I’m wondering whether this is due to the one-time link. You can’t download a backup twice with a single link. So, when it fails once, resuming the download is probably cancelled by Discourse itself.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2025, 11:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/3 "2025-11-15T23:12:10Z")
> [@Canapin](#):
>
> the download crashed at roughly 50%.
i think you need to change the way you’re downloading the backup
> [@Backup upload not working](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-upload-not-working/386714/4):
>
> Press ⌘ + Space → type Terminal → Enter Run your command scp -C root@domain.com:/var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default/cate-s-community-2025-10-17-161933-v20251016143343.tar.gz . -C → enables compression [root@domain.com](mailto:root@domain.com): → your server’s login /var/discourse/…tar.gz → remote path . → save it in your current local directory (e.g. /Users/yourname)
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 2:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/4 "2025-11-16T02:08:18Z")
Well, there sure are other ways to download backups, but I’d rather identify the cause and fix this particular issue 😄
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 8:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/5 "2025-11-16T08:55:43Z")
> [@MaxenceC](#):
>
> I’m wondering whether this is due to the one-time link. You can’t download a backup twice with a single link. So, when it fails once, resuming the download is probably cancelled by Discourse itself.
probably this, but this is not the only issue preventing full download of the backup via web browser
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [November 16, 2025, 11:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/6 "2025-11-16T11:47:59Z")
As an update, the forum was migrated to another server (for unrelated reasons), but the issue persists. The backup download (3.3 GB) always fails.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/7 "2025-11-18T12:00:45Z")
I tried downloading a backup from another forum and experienced the same.
Can someone try to replicate on their own instance? On both sites the download fails after 30 seconds.
Moving this to #Contribute > Bug because I’m quite sure this is not just me.
---
### Author:  [@NJGF-Admin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NJGF-Admin)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2025, 1:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/8 "2025-11-18T13:01:32Z")
I have been experiencing this same issue for over a week. Fully updated twice in that time but the issue still persists. Self-hosted on IONOS. Backup size 1.5GB.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2025, 4:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/9 "2025-11-19T16:39:44Z")
I’ve submitted a PR to address this by increasing the Nginx timeouts specifically for `/admin/backups/`, which should help prevent mid-stream “Failed – Network error” drops during larger downloads:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/36107](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/36107)
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### Author:  [@NJGF-Admin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NJGF-Admin)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2025, 1:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/10 "2025-11-23T13:58:38Z")
Tried again just now. Still failing at 1GB
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2025, 10:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/11 "2025-11-23T22:47:09Z")
This is way too risky, it can open up risk for unintended denial of service.
We should be using sendfile there and nginx should handle it without any proxy needs.
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### Author:  [@NJGF-Admin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NJGF-Admin)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2025, 6:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/12 "2025-11-29T06:24:21Z")
Fully updated 2025.12.0-latest, issue persists.
Edit: I _can_ download the backups via WinSCP or something like that but it would be nice if it worked as advertised and the email link + browser download completes successfully.
AI is probably wrong but also advising to increase the: DISCOURSE\_NGINX\_PROXY\_READ\_TIMEOUT: 600 to resolve this issue.
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### Author:  [@WaitroseCarpark](https://meta.discourse.org/u/WaitroseCarpark)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/13 "2025-11-30T16:48:47Z")
I’m getting this as well. 13GB backup size (my last full backup before offloading all media to S3 before anyone complains!)
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2025, 5:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/14 "2025-11-30T17:47:27Z")
> [@WaitroseCarpark](#):
>
> 13GB backup size
wow! this is definitely the size to be doing over SSH rather than the web browser
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/15 "2025-11-30T20:12:12Z")
Regardless of what should be the _right_ way to do something, we’re just highlighting the fact that a useful built-in feature is currently broken 🙂
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2025, 8:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/16 "2025-11-30T20:17:14Z")
i was being sarcastic
> [@WaitroseCarpark](#):
>
> offloading all media to S3
the python script below won’t continue to work after enabling secure-media though
[https://github.com/Ethsim12/Discourse-Image-Exporter-by-requests](https://github.com/Ethsim12/Discourse-Image-Exporter-by-requests)
---
### Author:  [@WaitroseCarpark](https://meta.discourse.org/u/WaitroseCarpark)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2025, 9:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/17 "2025-12-01T09:21:33Z")
Might I suggest some helpful text telling admin file location of backup incase they want to download with a client?
Wouldn’t have found it without @Ethsim2 earlier post
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### Author:  [@NJGF-Admin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NJGF-Admin)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2025, 12:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/18 "2025-12-01T12:07:38Z")
> [@WaitroseCarpark](#):
>
> file location of backup
/var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default/your\_backup\_filename.tar.gz
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### Author:  [@WaitroseCarpark](https://meta.discourse.org/u/WaitroseCarpark)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 11:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/19 "2025-12-02T11:56:54Z")
Also this button is misleading - it would be better labelled as ‘Email Download Link’
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 12:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578/20 "2025-12-02T12:41:11Z")
> [@WaitroseCarpark](#):
>
> Might I suggest some helpful text telling admin file location of backup incase they want to download with a client?
It doesn’t know. It can’t know. It depends on your docker configuration in your yml file. It’s usually in standalone, but it could be in web\_only, but it could also be anywhere in the file system.
> [@WaitroseCarpark](#):
>
> Also this button is misleading - it would be better labelled as ‘Email Download Link’
While that’s technically true, I don’t remember anyone else expressing that concern in the past decade. Do you find it very misleading? You can change it on your own site if you think it’ll help.
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/network-error-on-backup-download/388578.md?page=2)