Support

Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#8908 Cron Job for altbackup fails.

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Friday, 01 July 2011 09:34 CDT

jtechmedical
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I searched the forum before posting? Yes
Have I read the Troubleshooting Wizard before posting? yes
Have I read the documentation before posting? yes
Joomla! version: (1.5.23)
PHP version: (5.2.14)
MySQL version: (5.0.91)
Host: (greengeeks)
Akeeba Backup Professional version: (3.2.7)

Description of my issue:

Cron Job for altbackup fails. Cron returns the following:
Akeeba Backup Alternate CRON Helper Script version 3.2.7 (2011-04-17) Copyright (C) 2010 Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Akeeba Backup is Free Software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3 or, at your option, any later version.

This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY as per sections 15 & 16 of the license. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html for details.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Unsetting time limit restrictions.



I've tried several things I found in the forum but nothing seems to help.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Edit the administrator/components/com_akeeba/altbackup.php file and find the following lines (they should be around lines 256 to 270):
// Attempt to use an infinite time limit, in case you are using the PHP CGI binary instead
// of the PHP CLI binary. This will not work with Safe Mode, though.
$safe_mode = true;
if(function_exists('ini_get')) {
	$safe_mode = ini_get('safe_mode');
}
if(!$safe_mode && function_exists('set_time_limit')) {
	echo "Unsetting time limit restrictions.\n";
	@set_time_limit(0);
} elseif (!$safe_mode) {
	echo "Could not unset time limit restrictions; you may get a timeout error\n";
} else {
	echo "You are using PHP's Safe Mode; you may get a timeout error\n";	
}
echo "\n";


Delete them and save the file. Does this work? If not, your version of PHP is not reporting the correct path to the current directory to Akeeba Backup's altbackup.php, making its use impossible. In this case, you can use the front-end backup feature with wget or curl. After all, that's what altbackup.php does anyway.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

jtechmedical
Thank you, That worked.
I think I removed lines 250-264 Which corresponded to the code you quoted.

My host had asked for "what exact php values must be enabled and what exact values must be disabled on the server" to see if there was something server related that might have been stoping the script from running as a cronjob.

I would prefer to run the backup.php file but my host has a limit of using 8% of server resources, if your site exceeds that limit they shut down your site (something that killed live chat for our site).

Thank you again, removing those lines solved the issue.

jtechmedical
Correction.... the cron job seemed to run, the "Unsetting time limit restrictions" notice disappeared. I thought I had found a back up file, but it turns out that the backup file was from the Lazy plugin not from the cron job.

attached is the updated log file

jtechmedical
(looks like the file didn't upload. the file type of .log is not supported)

DEBUG |110620 17:31:10|Kettenrad :: Attempting to load from database (backend)

DEBUG |110620 17:31:10| -- Loaded stored Akeeba Factory (backend)

DEBUG |110620 17:31:11|-- Removing temporary file d925d2e3.sql

DEBUG |110620 17:31:11|-- Removing temporary file 433a76ac.sql

DEBUG |110620 17:31:11|-- Removing temporary file 79008f62.sql

DEBUG |110620 17:31:11|-- Removing temporary file fbb13787.sql

DEBUG |110620 17:31:12|

DEBUG |110620 17:31:40|Kettenrad :: Attempting to load from database (backend)

DEBUG |110620 17:31:40| -- Stored Akeeba Factory (backend) not found - hard reset

DEBUG |110620 17:31:40|

DEBUG |110622 10:23:59|Kettenrad :: Attempting to load from database (backend)

DEBUG |110622 10:23:59| -- Stored Akeeba Factory (backend) not found - hard reset

DEBUG |110622 10:24:01|

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Please go to your site's back-end, click on Components, Akeeba Backup, View Log, select the "Front-end" origin from the drop down, then click on Download Log. This will download a .txt file. Put it in a ZIP file and attach it. I have to see the entire log file in order to understand what happens.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

jtechmedical
Unfortunetly there is no log for the "Front-end" origin.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
This means that the backup did not run. If the backup runs to its completion, you will see a lot more lines reporting the progress of the backup after the header.

As I said in my earlier post, your version of PHP is not reporting the correct path to the current directory to Akeeba Backup's altbackup.php, making its use impossible. In this case, you can use the front-end backup feature with wget or curl (see my first post for a link to the instructions). After all, that's what altbackup.php does anyway, when it's able to work properly.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user29002
I got this same error and I checked in the Joomla Plug-in folder and saw "Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling" disabled.

I enabled it and everything works accordingly.

user29002
Correction... it was not the Joomla plug-in folder but it was the PLUG-IN MANAGER my site's Admin control panel.

user29002
Sorry... still getting this error. Disregard 2 posts above by me.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
As I already wrote two times:

As I said in my earlier post, your version of PHP is not reporting the correct path to the current directory to Akeeba Backup's altbackup.php, making its use impossible. In this case, you can use the front-end backup feature with wget or curl (see my first post for a link to the instructions). After all, that's what altbackup.php does anyway, when it's able to work properly.


What gives:
You can not use altbackup.php on your server. It will not work. PHP is lying to the script and the script can not work.

Alternative:
Use a CRON job with the front-end backup feature. Full instructions about that alternative can be found on https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/frontend-backup.html

If you get stuck with that CRON job, ping me so that I can help!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

jtechmedical
Our host helped me correct the initial issue with the "PHP not reporting the correct path to the current directory to Akeeba Backup's altbackup.php"

now when the cronjob runs I have a new error, "PHP Fatal error: Class 'AEUtilJconfig' not found in ..../administrator/components/com_akeeba/akeeba/platform/joomla15/platform.php on line 826"

There is still no log available.



PS. I don't know who nsvr6 is or why they are posting off topic comments in this discussion.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
OK, I thought it was the same person posting using two different user accounts. Sorry about that - it has happened to me a lot of times in the past. Explains the confusion :D

OK, back to your problem. What you describe sounds like a known issue that was solved in Akeeba Backup 3.3.a1. Can you please try installing the latest beta, Akeeba Backup 3.3.b1, and retry backing up? Thank you :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

jtechmedical
upgrading to 3.3.b1 seems to have fixed the problem.

Although I get 403 errors when I try to change the access control settings in the backend.

Thanks.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome! I am glad it's working now :)

Regarding the 403 errors, please make sure that you are logged in as a Super Administrator before trying to change access control settings.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

jtechmedical
Thanks again.

As for the 403 errors. Logged in as a super admin and I still get 403 errors when I attempt to change access control settings.

URL of the error HTTP://www.mydomain.com/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=acl&task=toggle&axo=download&id=70

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Can you try creating a new Super Administrator account, log in with it and retry? If this doesn't work, please send me a Personal Message with the URL to your site and the new Super Admin username/password so that I can take a look. Thanks!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

Support policy: We would like to kindly inform you that when using our support you have already agreed to the Support Policy which is part of our Terms of Service. Thank you for your understanding and for helping us help you!