Cloning WordPress instance in Plesk fails: Too many levels of symbolic links

Symptoms

• The following warning is displayed when cloning WordPress instance.

  An error occurred while setting the correct permissions for files (644) and directories (755) on the WordPress installation 'staging.example.com'. openat 'db.php' failed: Too many levels of symbolic links Failed to open safely /var/www/vhosts/example.com/staging.example.com/wp-content/db.php: Too many levels of symbolic links

• The file with symbolic link mentioned on error (db.php) belongs to a WordPress plugin, e.g. query-monitor:

  # ls -lah /var/www/vhosts/example.com/wp-content/db.php
  ..
  db.php -> /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/plugins/query-monitor/wp-content/db.php
  ..

Cause

WP Toolkit bug EXTWPTOOLK-9401: WP Toolkit cannot process the symbolic link created by the plugin "query-monitor".

Resolution

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. Navigate to Domains > example.com > WP Toolkit > Plugins.

3. Disable the affected WordPress plugin on the source website before cloning.

4. Clone the website and enable the plugin again on the destination (newly cloned) website.