Hi Ken I thought I was clear. Never on means it has never been turned on, never allowed, never used. I found what is doing the backups though and that is adhoc tasks. Apparently if someone makes a modification to a course that was created using a restore (I think that's what triggers this along but not sure, is if it was a restored course) it makes an entry in the adhoc system and then the "cron" job executes it until it's finished.
I found this verbiage in one of my "cron" job logs.
Execute adhoc task: core_course\task\course_delete_modules
... started 13:30:06. Current memory use 33.7MB.
<h2>got here! backup_aclaurus_activity_task.class.php</h2><br /><h2>got here! backup_aclaurus_stepslib.php</h2><br />... used 196 dbqueries
... used 2.0592029094696 seconds
Adhoc task complete: core_course\task\course_delete_modules
The <h2>got here... portion that is what I put in my module code to let me see debug information when a backup and/or a restore is performed on a course with the aclaurus module in it. So that's why I see it here. So I am very puzzled, and I see very little documentation for this. Why does a backup need to be performed?
So now that I know what is causing the backups to be created I can rest that part of my mind worried about if the system has a rogue process. It doesn't. But I am very perplexed why a backup would be triggered. What does that backup serve? There is no automatic backup being done. Where does this backup go to (considering that it finishes without errors, which it does not at present time).
I'm going to turn my direction back to the error in the system. I must understand WHERE the problem is thrown.
I believe it is a module that has a bug in it. I tried to rule out my own module(s) first since I have done nothing to upgrade them in the last site upgrade, but honestly, none of my modules have anything special in the backup and restore sections of the modules. They are all using "stock" code for the most part gleened from examples here on moodle.org development documentation.
Also I have confirmed that none of my modules throws an exception. The problem happens before any of my modules backup code gets fired.