Under any circumstances you can append -m
or
--machine-readable
to the end of the command line to
instruct Remote CLI to use a machine-readable output format. If you omit
it, a human-readable format will be used instead (default).
Using the option --nocolor
will skip the
generation of color escape sequences. The default behaviour of Remote
CLI is to color-code its output for easier reading. However, some
terminal emulators, like Windows' command prompt application, do not
support them and display them as verbatim text. This can be confusing,
therefore the use of --nocolor
is strongly
recommended.
Moreover, you can specify the --license
parameter
to display the text of the GNU General Public License version 3, under
which the software is distributed. In this case, the action and all
options will be silently ignored. This has the same effect as specifying
the license command.
If you have a host with a self-signed certificate, or a
certificate signed by a non-public certificate authority, you can use
the
--certificate=
option, where /path/to/certificate.pem
/path/to/certificate.pem
is the
full filesystem path to a PEM-formatted certificate. This certificate
will be considered a valid certification authority for the purposes of
Akeeba Remote CLI. The practical use case for that is intranets, local
servers and testing environments, typically using self-signed
certificates.
Each action can be used with one or several options. Some of them are mandatory for the correct operation of Remote CLI. The following sections detail the parameters which can be used with each option. All actions require the following mandatory options:
The URL to your site's root, without a trailing slash, e.g.
http://www.example.com
Please note that if your site is
located in a subdirectory, you have to give the full path to the
subdirectory, e.g. http://www.example.com/joomla
If you are using Akeeba Backup for WordPress the
hostName
must also include the path to
Akeeba Backup's index.php file tasked with handling the JSON API,
e.g.
http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupwp/app/index.php
where http://www.example.com is the URL to your site and
akeebabackupwp is the name of the folder where the Akeeba Backup
for WordPress plugin is installed.
The secret key, as defined in Akeeba Backup's component parameters. In order to access it in the component, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Components, Akeeba Backup and click on the Component Parameters button. Make sure the Enable front-end and remote backup option is enabled. Right below it, you will find the Secret Key field.
![]() | Important |
---|---|
We strongly advise you to use only lower and upper case Latin letters and numbers (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) in your secret word, as many servers will refuse to work with secret words containing special characters. |
![]() | Important |
---|---|
If you are using sh404SEF make sure you have upgraded to the latest release. Older versions conflicted with Akeeba Backup's remote API feature and will cause Remote CLI to report a JSON decoding error. No support will be provided for this error. The only workaround is to upgrade your copy of sh404SEF (which is a good idea anyway, as the older versions also contained potential security vulnerabilities). |
![]() | Important |
---|---|
Some SEF and security components will corrupt or block the
request to Akeeba Backup's Remote API. In this case you will
most likely get a "JSON decoding error". If this happens you may
have to instruct your component to ignore com_akeeba or allow
full access to the
|
Below you can find the options required by each command:
No extra options are used
The numeric profile ID you want take a backup with. If it is not specified, a backup with the default profile (#1) will be taken. Please see the profiles command for an easy way to list profile names and IDs.
An optional description of your backup. Put it in double
quotes, i.e. --description="My backup
description"
. If not specified, the default backup
description (the one with the date and time of the backup) will be
used by Akeeba Backup automatically.
An optional backup comment. Put it in double quotes, i.e.
--comment="My backup comment"
. If not specified,
no comment will be stored with your backup.
If you specify --download
or
-d
, the produced backup archive will be
downloaded to your computer. In this case, please refer to the
next section for its required parameters. You can also specify
--delete
or -D
together with
--download
/ -d
in order to
delete the backup archive after it has been downloaded to your
PC.
The numeric backup ID to download (see listbackups). Note: when you use the --download or -d switch with the backup action you must not use this option. In all other cases, this option is mandatory.
Can be one of http, chunk or curl
instructs Remote CLI to download the backup archive through HTTP, similar to what you get by clicking the download links in the "Manage Backups" (formerly "Administer Backup Files") page of Akeeba Backup. Even though it is the simplest method, it may cause corrupted downloads of backup archives over 10-20MB on some shared hosts.
Files are transferred unencrypted with this method. You are advised to only use this if your server is using HTTPS or with JPS (encrypted) archives only.
works similarly to http, but is designed to work with larger backup archives. It tries to download 1Mb at a time, in order to work around server restrictions on HTTP download. However, on a few shared hosts this will cause the download to fail with a timeout error, memory outage error or an Internal Server Error (HTTP 500 error).
is the recommended method and can be used to download the backup archive over FTP, FTPS or SFTP. The only downside is that it needs some configuration (see the dlurl option below).
If you are using plain old FTP (not FTPS or SFTP) the files and login credentials are transferred unencrypted. You are advised to never use this method with plain old FTP (not FTPS or SFTP) for security reasons.
Specify the path to save the downloaded file. For example,
--dlpath="c:\User\Myuser\Downloads"
on Windows,
or --dlpath="/home/myuser/Downloads"
on Linux,
Mac OS X and other UNIX-based operating systems.
This option is only required if you are using the curl download method. In this case, it tells Remote CLI how to connect to your site in order to download the backup archives.
If you are using FTP, you have to specify something like
--dlurl="ftp://username:password@hostname:port/path/to/output/directory
Username and Password are your FTP username and password.
Hostname is the FTP server's host name. Port is the numeric TCP/IP
port (normally it's 21, ask your host). The
/path/to/output/directory
is the FTP path to
your output directory. In order to figure out the latter, please
use FileZilla to connect to your site and navigate to the backup
output directory (by default that is
administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup
).
Copy the path shown above the right-hand folders pane. That's the
one you want.
Example:
--dlurl="ftp://myuser:
mypassword@ftp.example.com:21/public_html/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup
![]() | Important |
---|---|
FTP is an unencrypted protocol. It is trivial for a third party to snoop into your connection and find the username and password you are using to connect to your server. We very strongly recommend using SFTP which is a file transfer protocol implemented over the very secure SSH remote server connection protocol. As a second best, you can use FTPS which is an encrypted version of FTP (exactly the same way HTTPS is an encrypted version of HTTP). |
The backup record's ID that you want deleted. Please see listbackups below.
The backup record's ID that you want deleted. Please see listbackups below.
This command has no options. It will simply return a list of profile IDs and descriptions.
(Optional) From which record you want to start the listing. If not specified, 0 is assumed, showing the top results (latest backup records).
(Optional) Up to which record you want the listing to go to. If not specified, 50 is assumed, therefore showing the latest 50 backup records.
The backup record's ID whose info you want displayed. Please see listbackups above.
There are no options. Calling this action will check if an update is available and, if there is, will install it automatically on your site.
![]() | Important |
---|---|
This feature IS NOT available on Joomla!. Extension updates are handled by Joomla! itself, not Akeeba Backup. Please refer to Joomla!'s documentation for information on updating extensions. |