Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Monday, 23 August 2010 23:24 CDT

user13190

Hello,

I have recently purchased just the pro version and have been enjoying setting it up - however I am unable to configure it to email me automaticly once the backup has completed.

I have ticked Enable front-end and remote backup (not sure if this is really required but have incase) + email on backup comletion = yes.

I have tried 2 different email address (incase of spam guards) and yet no email appear to be sent.

Can you please advise me what I need to do, as this was a feature I was looking forward to using...

With thanks

justin

Tuesday, 24 August 2010 04:32 CDT

nicholas

If you need to get an email when the backup completes, stating that the backup is now over, you are looking at the correct place. However, this feature will only work with front-end, Remote and CRON backups. It will not send you an email when you launch a backup from the back-end of the component.

If everything is set up correctly and you don't get an email when a front-end, remote or CRON backup completes, please verify that you have correctly set up your Joomla! email settings in the Global Configuration. You can test that your site is able to send emails by using the mass mail feature of Joomla! in the back-end. If it doesn't send an email, you'll have to edit your Joomla! Global Configuration and fix the email settings.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 24 August 2010 06:18 CDT

user13190

Thanks for the reply - does it not work with the lazy plugin for schedules? Is it planed in the future by any chance as I was kind of hoping not to have to use CRON Job.

with thanks

justin

Tuesday, 24 August 2010 07:27 CDT

nicholas

Yes, it works fine with lazy scheduling backups too.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 20:47 CDT

user13190

Thanks I can confirm that I now have the email part working as I receaved it this morning. However it appears to be generated by the following rule. After the set time (00:00) + if a user is on a page of the site. If the user if not there then the file being generated (if you watch via FTP) does not grow.

It is not set to test mode although i did enable it once to test things. Is the user presence due to the lazy method or is something incorrect.

Thanks again

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 21:20 CDT

nicholas

This is the expected behaviour. The Lazy Scheduling works as advertised: it generates a backup archive as long as there is user activity. When there is no user activity the backup "sleeps" until the next web visitor comes in. Then, the backup will continue.

Unlike LazyBackup - which only does a MySQL backup - the plg_aklazy plugin can't and won't attempt to produce a full site backup in the course of a single page load. The reason is dead simple: timeouts. If you try to backup anything except a very small website on a very fast host you will get a timeout error. Akeeba Backup overcomes this limitation by segmenting the backup process to multiple steps. Each page access with plg_aklazy running triggers at least one backup step. If your visitor stays longer on the page, another step is also triggered using AJAX calls. This process goes on with visitor activity on your site, until all backup steps are complete.

You can read more about plg_aklazy in its documentation page.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 21:46 CDT

user13190

Thanks for the reply - FYI our site backup is 1.4gb (I know it is large but it contains some large video files and source material). it has a timeout issue sometimes if manually started via IE8 however firefox it always work OK.

Great work - and thanks again for your explanations.

Justin

Thursday, 26 August 2010 00:11 CDT

nicholas

You're welcome :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 26 August 2010 01:09 CDT

user13190

##text##
Hi, I have just receaved another backup completation email. I was not expecting it.
Can you please tell me why it created another backup. Test mode is OFF - double checked
Time is set to 00:00
I checked this morning and it created a backup.

Can you please have look at the logs and advise what might be incorrect?

:(

Thursday, 26 August 2010 06:18 CDT

nicholas

I don't see a problem. According to your log:

DEBUG |100826 00:37:50|====== Starting Step number 1 ======

DEBUG |100826 03:50:38|Kettenrad :: Just finished

It only ran once and in the time specified.

However the time displayed is your server time, not your local time. If your server is in GMT-7 and you are in GMT+2 then 00:00 server time is 09:00 your local time. The first backup runs "as soon as possible" as there is no previous backup, but all the subsequent backups will run only once per day. Do note that if you manually clean your Joomla! cache plg_aklazy's "memory" files will also be removed, causing the backup to run again "as soon as possible".

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 30 August 2010 23:11 CDT

user13190

Thanks again for your reply. I have been watching my backups generate over the last few days and have one last question.

If the site is not visited in a period of for example 48 hours are 2 backups then scheduled? I ask, as over the weekend (with no visits - there were no backups created = Correct) however on Monday I received 2 emails confirming 2 backups were created. However the issue I have is I do not need 2 backups creating (one after the other) if it misses a day. I assume one started but could not complete within the 24 hour period?

Could you please confirm this is expected behaviour? ... perhaps I would be better using a cron job to schedule are they are to setup?

With thanks

Justin

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 06:08 CDT

nicholas

Yes and no. It all depends on the requested backup time (which, by the way, is the server's time, not the time you see on your clock at home). Let's say that you have told Lazy Scheduling to take a backup at 15:00 every day. Due to adequate traffic, a backup is generated on Friday around 15:30. You have no visitors throughout Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, if the first visitor comes on 10:00, Lazy Scheduling detects that there's an overdue backup which should have run since Saturday 15:00, so it takes the first backup. The next backup run is then scheduled for Monday 15:00, so this is where the second backup comes from. This is not a bug, it's how the system is designed to work and is, in fact, the same way CRON implements its scheduling. However, since your server is never off-line, you never experience CRON running daily jobs twice on a single day ;)

If you expect to have many days with total absence of visitor traffic, the best approach is to use CRON instead of plg_aklazy to schedule your backups. The Lazy Scheduling plugin is designed for medium to high traffic sites with a near-constant flow of visitor traffic.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 06:13 CDT

user13190

Thanks for your reply - I will observe what happens over the next few days..

With thanks

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