Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Tuesday, 05 October 2010 08:28 CDT

Ewoudv

Lately when I install a backup on my local computer I get a blanc homepage. The url is for example http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101005 or http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101005/index.php but as said this shows a blanc page. If I type http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101005/community to access the community page it shows the community site without any problems. Also sometimes it suddenly works, that is for a couple of times and then sometimes if I click on the homepage again it goes to http://tdu_akeeba_101005, so it deletes the localhost/ part.

And one more strange behavior that I sometimes see is that when I click a menu item or profile on my local installation it takes me to my live website. I do not see a pattern in it yet but if I do I will let you know. My main problem is now the blanc screen.

Tuesday, 05 October 2010 18:25 CDT

steph.s

Hi Ewoudv,
I'm sorry to hear that you are having issues. There is a comprehensive tutorial that may help and can be found in two places. The first is the Finalizing the Restoration Process chapter of our documentation. The other place, repeating the same information, is in the Quick Start Guide, towards the end of it.

If neither of these help, =( we will need the error log.
Cheers,
Steph :=D

Tuesday, 05 October 2010 20:38 CDT

Ewoudv

Thanks for your reply.

I checked the page you refer to which I didn’t read before and it mentions most of my problems and what might causes it. I checked most things that I was able to check but no luck.

Where can I find the error log? I do see one in my website’s root and administrator root but I do not know if those are the ones you are looking for. And where can I sent them to? Posting them here is for security reasons not the best place I guess. Do you also need the .htaccess file?

One thing I read a couple of times is that mod_rewrite must be enabled in the local wamp server and I checked that one and it is indeed enabled.

Wednesday, 06 October 2010 05:54 CDT

dlb

The blank page is usually caused by a php error that isn't being reported to the screen properly. The error log that Steph was referring to is the Apache server error log. Under WAMP I believe it can be accessed from the system tray icon, but I don't use WAMP, so I'm not 100% sure. Under Linux, the log is usually in /var/logs, but the exact location and name vary by distribution. You can zip and password protect the file and PM the password to one of us so we can review it.

The intermittent nature of the problem eliminates some of the common causes of the problem, .htaccess, php.ini, mod_rewrite, etc. would be absolutely consistent. Do you have a module or component on your front page that uses a fixed url or path in it's configuration file?

When you catch a menu item going to your live site, check the menu item itself. Is it set up to go to a fixed url? The .htaccess file can do this, but once again, it would be consistent. Are you using an external SEF component?

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: native

Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Wednesday, 06 October 2010 08:56 CDT

Ewoudv

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your reply. Is it correct that the forum is redirected to www.joomlapck.net? I did not notice that before.

Before I post the rar file and pm you the password please confirm this is safe.

Thanks.

Ps I am not using a external file. I will also upload the .htaccess file, maybe that will help?

Wednesday, 06 October 2010 09:10 CDT

dlb

The old joomlapack.net address should be redirected to the new akeebabackup.com url. You should not see the JoomlaPack address from the forum page.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: native

Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Wednesday, 06 October 2010 10:11 CDT

Ewoudv

I have enclosed a printscreen of the part where I type the URL's. Strange by the way because now I have the akeebabackup.com URL again. Confusing :rolleyes: :)

With "Ps I am not using a external file." I actually meant that I am not using a external SEF component.

I have enclosed the rar file with the 2 files in it. I will sent you the password by PM.##text##

Thursday, 07 October 2010 03:38 CDT

nicholas

Did you follow one of your very old bookmarks to the forum before you got the joomlapack.net URL?

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, 07 October 2010 03:51 CDT

dlb

This looks like a partial restore. :( If you look towards the end of the log, you can see a lot of "missing file" errors. How did you extract the files on your local computer during the restore, using kickstart or eXtract? Did you see any errors during the extraction?

If this local restore is a development or test site, the best solution may be to start over. Do a new backup of the live site and save the Akeeba backup log file (this could also be a backup problem, there would be messages about unreadable files in the log). Then repeat the restore to your local computer. If the restore is successful, we're done. If not, we have to figure out if the problem is in the backup or the restore.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: native

Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Thursday, 07 October 2010 03:54 CDT

Ewoudv

I do not use bookmarks for akeebabackup.com. When I type the URL www.akeebabackup.com it takes me to the correct URL but when I click support-free support forum it then takes me to the joomlapack.net website. It is also HTTPS. But it only happens now and then so it is not consistent.

Thursday, 07 October 2010 04:23 CDT

Ewoudv

The extraction is being done using Kickstart. The installation itself runs smoothly without any errors.

The local restore is done for testing purposes. For example if an update of a component is available I always use a recent backup of my live site which I restore locally to test the new component before I install it on my livesite.

I just made a new backup of my live website and I have enclosed the logfile. I am only able to select Backend in the View Log part. The password is the same as for the 2 other files. Tonight I will restore it to my local computer.

Thanks.

##text##

Thursday, 07 October 2010 06:51 CDT

Ewoudv

I just restored the new backup but still the same problem.

Thursday, 07 October 2010 08:35 CDT

dlb

I spot checked the missing files from the server log against the backup log. They are not being backed up, but there is no warning about an unreadable file either. I'm not sure what to make of that, except that I may be on the wrong track. I'm going to ask Nicholas to take a look at this.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: native

Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Thursday, 07 October 2010 19:02 CDT

Ewoudv

Ok, thanks for checking.

Thursday, 07 October 2010 23:13 CDT

nicholas

I have four potential errors here:

1. The RewriteBase line should be uncommented in order to allow SEF URLs to work properly
2. WAMP is using PHP 5.3 by default, but your template doesn't support it. This may also hold true for other Joomla! extensions, so I'd suggest downloading, installing and activating WAMP's PHP 5.2.11 package.
3. WAMP's error log never includes the PHP errors. In order to make them visible, please edit your php.ini file and set display_errors=on and error_reporting=E_ALL. Then, in your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, system tab and set Error Reporting to "Maximum". This will at least let us know what is the exact PHP error occuring instead of simply showing a blank page.
4. Some of your components may be storing absolute paths or absolute URLs, causing the issues you are having.

Finally, the redirects to your site are happening because you have placed absolute URLs in your links (i.e. http://www.example.com/somepage.html instead of /somepage.html). The easiest method to work around them is using my Link-a-tron Content Plugin and its Link Migration feature.

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, 07 October 2010 23:54 CDT

Ewoudv

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks for the extensive reply.

1. Where can I uncomment the RewriteBase line?
2. I will do that tonight when I am back home. My live website is running on 5.2.14 I just checked.
3. Now that you mention it, I disabled that a while ago when I was working on a site with a component which gave a lot of errors and warning. I will turn them back on.
You probably mean the Server tab. The error reporting is now set to Maximum.
4. I have to investigate that one but I am not sure where to start. But does your Link-a-tron Content Plugin takes care of that or is your bottom paragraph referring to something else?

Regards.

Friday, 08 October 2010 05:21 CDT

dlb

RewriteBase is in the .htaccess file. :)

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: native

Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

Friday, 08 October 2010 08:27 CDT

nicholas

1. As Dale said
2. That's a good idea
3. The Joomla! error reporting is half the solution. The other half is in the php.ini file. Remember to restart WAMPserver's Apache service for the changes to have effect!
4. The Link-a-Tron content plugin only takes care of the hardcoded links in content items (articles). Nothing more and nothing else. If a component stores absolute paths or URLs in its configuration (i.e. VirtueMart) you have to manually reconfigure it using the instructions of its developer. Especially for VirtueMart, we have instructions in our documentation (in "Finalizing your restoration") as it is tricky and requires editing a file to achieve that.

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!

Saturday, 09 October 2010 01:17 CDT

Ewoudv

1. Is that done by changing:
# RewriteBase /
into
RewriteBase /
2. Not much I can do about that. I thank my webhost for that :)
3. I completely reinstalled the wampserver because I could not install the addon. The addon is now installed and when I take a look at the php.ini file I see that display_errors is found a couple of times. The first one is in the part "About this file" and looks like this:
; - display_errors = Off [Security]
And the next one is in “Error handling and reporting” and that one looks like this:
display_errors = On
So I guess the second one is the one you mention and already correctly configured.
Also the other one also looks correctly configured:
error_reporting = E_ALL
4. I will check that later. My main priority now is not to get a blanc homepage screen after a local restore.

When I uncomment RewriteBase as mentioned at 1. and when I do a restore locally and I want to open my website at http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101009/community it brings me back to the localhost page.

I have enclosed 2 new files with the same password:
1. The Akeeba logfile after the backup has been made. Error reporting was set to maximum in the Global Configuration
2. The error report as downloaded from the cPanel. But it doesn’t show errors of today when I made the new backup

The php error log of wamp doesn’t show any errors of today’s restore so therefore I didn’t add that one.

I hope I interpreter your comments correctly because I do not have a lot of skills with this.

##2logs##

Saturday, 09 October 2010 13:05 CDT

steph.s

Sometimes when I type an URL into the address bar, I accidentally go to a similar URL because the address bar remembers the pages I have visited

Sunday, 10 October 2010 10:07 CDT

nicholas

Ah! It's the RewriteBase line. In your case, it must read:

RewriteBase /tdu_akeeba_101009

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!

Sunday, 10 October 2010 19:14 CDT

Ewoudv

I changed the code, restarted the wamp server but unfortunately the problem is still there.

Monday, 11 October 2010 08:10 CDT

nicholas

Can you please PM me the password to the files again? I would like to give another look at them but I can't find the password to the archive.

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, 11 October 2010 08:14 CDT

Ewoudv

Just sent you the PM.

Monday, 11 October 2010 12:20 CDT

nicholas

OK, I got very confused with your replies. I asked you things about your local installation and at some point you gave me info about the live server (the PHP version), which made me think that you now had a problem restoring to a live host, which is a completely different bag of fruits. I reread all the posts and I can now understand what is going on.

You have still not answered to my most important question regarding your LOCAL server. Which version of PHP does your LOCAL server (WAMPserver?) runs on? If it is PHP 5.3 please do the following: Uninstall it and install Zend Server CE (PHP 5.2). Do not use the PHP 5.3 version, use the PHP 5.2 version, as detailed in our Quick Start Guide.

I think that the error is caused because your LOCAL server is using PHP 5.3 and the LIVE server is using PHP 5.2. FYI, many (most!) Joomla! extensions, including templates, do not fully support PHP 5.3 and will cause this kind of blank pages. I've seen that happening. I've seen that happening on my local restorations, too! This is why I always suggest downgrading to PHP 5.2. It's the only way to take that factor out and start talking about configuration file mismatches.

Finally, set error_reporting to E_ALL and display_errors to on in your php.ini of your LOCAL server. Also you must change the Error Reporting on your site's Global Configuration to "Maximum". This is the only way we can get the exact PHP error message causing your blank page issues. As a matter of fact, doing those two simple changes should now spit out an error message (which you should copy & paste here) instead of a perfectly blank 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!

Monday, 11 October 2010 19:28 CDT

Ewoudv

Sorry that I got you confused with my answers. It was getting a little confusing for me too. This probably has got to do with the fact that Dale also asked me for error reports of my live site server, that is that I think he was asking.

On my local Wamp server I have now PHP 5.2.11. The error reportings are set to E_All and On on my local Wamp server.

The RewriteBase in .htaccess has now the code: RewriteBase /tdu_akeeba_101009

What I did this time.
I set the Error Reporting on my live site's Global Configuration to "Maximum. Then I ran a backup. That I installed on my local Wamp server.

Outcome:
Still a blanc homepage. When I go to a different menu item like http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101012/nieuws
It shows me the localhost homepage but the URL is still http://localhost/tdu_akeeba_101012/nieuws

I have enclosed the php error log of my Wamp server after I have installed today’s backup on my local Wamp server.

Hopefully this all makes sense. If you need more info then please let me know.
##text##

Tuesday, 12 October 2010 01:35 CDT

nicholas

Finally, set error_reporting to E_ALL and display_errors to on in your php.ini of your LOCAL server. Also you must change the Error Reporting on your site's Global Configuration to "Maximum".

Both of those steps pertain to your LOCAL server, not the live server. If you can't access your local (restored) site's back-end you can still set the Error Reporting to Maximum by opening your site's configuration.php file and modifying the error_reporting line so that it reads:

var $error_reporting = '30719';

Provided that you have also changed your LOCAL server's php.ini (and restarted XAMPP) it should now show the exact error message instead of a blank page. Your PHP error log only reports a notice from K2's router, which doesn't explain the blank page. I also strongly suggest making sure that XAMPP loads mod_rewrite in its Apache configuration file, as per the instructions in this blog.

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, 12 October 2010 07:03 CDT

Ewoudv

It looks like my messages are still confusing because I did all what you mentioned. Also just to make sure I work with WAMP and not XAMPP.

Both of those steps pertain to your LOCAL server, not the live server

I have indeed done this on my local WAMP server. Also to make sure I have added that in the attachment so you can check if I have done it correctly.

Also the mod_rewrite is enabled in my local WAMP server. The error reporting in Global Configurations is set to maximum on my local WAMP server.

I have also enclosed the latest PHP error log with a couple of attempts to open the homepage that I did just now. Unfortunately it only shows again the K2 notices.

Maybe if it is better when you receive a copy of my backup then please let me know and I provide you one. Also then please let me know how I can sent it to you, it is a little over 51 mb in a rar file.

##text##

Tuesday, 12 October 2010 09:59 CDT

nicholas

Yes, I think that's the best way. Please upload it somewhere and send me a PM with a link to it.

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, 19 October 2010 21:50 CDT

nicholas

Thank you for sending me the backup archive. Without it I wouldn't be able to figure out what is going on.

The solution is very simple. You are using RokBridge to bridge your Joomla! site with phpBB3. RokBridge tries to actively load data from the phpBB3 database. This has the following issues:
1. The connection information to phpBB's database is read from phpBB's config
2. phpBB's config points to the old site, as its configuration is not refreshed by the Akeeba Backup Installer. This is normal, as phpBB3 is an external script and not part of Joomla!
3. (1) & (2) mean that the process will ultimately fail and you can't access your site
4. Moreover, RSFirewall suppresses the display of the error messages making it impossible to figure out

The thing here is that RokBridge causes two different problems in the back- and front-end.

In the back-end, it tries to authenticate you against the phpBB3 installation, causing a login failure. In the front-end, the "Latest Posts" module tries to load data from the phpBB3 database, it fails, and crashes your site.

The solution is to either modify the configuration file of phpBB3 after restoration, or disable the RokBridge user and authentication plugins by editing the database, then login to the backend and disable the Latest Posts module.

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, 20 October 2010 07:10 CDT

Ewoudv

It works!!

Unbelieveble that such a simple thing as a config.php file of phpbb creates such a problem.

Many thanks for your great help, Dale a well! Support here is perfect!

Thursday, 21 October 2010 06:06 CDT

nicholas

It usually take us much less to find the solution, but we didn't have any bridged sites for quite a while :) You're welcome and thank you for your kind words!

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!

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