by Doug Smith.
The link for the error points back to a bug from v1.9 and 2.1. The errors discussed relate to restoring files that are over 2GB in size, which is not my issue. One person did solve this problem by adding a tmp folder, which is why I tried that.
I tried a clean restore with the original mbz file, as suggested but have the same problems. I can't really monitor /moodledata/temp/backup because I don't have access to command line on the server. All I know is that after choose my physics12.mbz and click the "restore" button, the hashed file is created in /moodledata/temp/backup/ob88.... and the restore process stops immediately with the error.
When I unzipped the .mbz file it does contain moodle_backup.xml.
Thanks