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This documentation page does not apply to our software versions for Joomla! 4.0 and later versions. If you are not using Joomla 3 please consult the documentation index to find and read the correct version of the documentation.

Checking for failed backups automatically

[Tip]Tip

This feature is only available in Akeeba Backup Professional.

While you can automate backups with any of the methods explained above, there is a small drawback. It is impossible to catch a failed backup if the backup failure was caused by a PHP error or the server killing the backup script for any reason (usually: time, file size and memory limits). This has the unwanted side effect of not knowing when your backup has failed unless you keep track of the backup records on your sites or the emails sent out by your CRON jobs (if any are sent at all – it depends on the server / service you are using).

You can automate the check for failed backups and have it email you when it detects that the latest backup has failed.

[Warning]Warning

This is an optional, advanced and potentially dangerous feature: if you check for failed backups while a backup is still running you will cause the backup to fail. We recommend scheduling backup checks a substantial amount of time (e.g. 1 hour) after the expected end time of your backups.

Front-end backup failure check, for use with CRON

[Tip]Tip

This feature is only available in Akeeba Backup Professional.

Requires the Enable Legacy Front-end Backup API (remote CRON jobs) option to be enabled in the component's Options, Frontend tab.

The front-end backup failure check feature lets you perform an unattended, scheduled failed backup check.

Before beginning to use this feature, you must set up Akeeba Backup to support the front-end backup option as explained in the relevant section of this documentation.

The URL to use to trigger the front-end backup failure check feature is

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=check&key=YourSecretKey

where YourSecretKey is the Secret Word for front-end backups, as configured in the component's Options page.

Please note that YourSecretKey must be URL-encoded. You can use an online tool like http://www.url-encode-decode.com or simply consult the Schedule Automatic Backups page.

If you want to automate the check you can schedule this URL just like you would a front-end backup URL. Furthermore, the front-end backup failure check URL does NOT use redirections. Therefore it can even be used with hosts and services which do not follow redirections.