Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Monday, 27 June 2011 03:55 CDT

user31869

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: 5.3.2
MySQL version: %.1.x
Host: Linode VPS / Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Akeeba Backup Professional version: 3.3b1
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue.

Description of my issue:

I have enabled the "Restore Points" option, then upgraded FlexiContent and Joomfish, went to the Administer Back Files > Restore points and found no records at all.

Monday, 27 June 2011 03:56 CDT

user31869

*MysQL 5.1.x

Monday, 27 June 2011 04:02 CDT

nicholas

During the component upgrade, did you see Akeeba Backup popping up on the screen and seemingly taking a backup? If not, System Restore Points are most likely not enabled.

In order to determine that, click on Extensions, Install/Uninstall and look towards the bottom of the page, right below the "Install from URL" box. Do you see a notice reading "Extensions installation enhanced by Akeeba Backup"? If not, then System Restore Points are certainly not activated.

In this case, go to Extensions, Plugin Manager and look for the "System - System Restore Points" plugin. Publish it and repeat the step above. You should now see the notice printed on the bottom of the extensions installer page and System Restore Points should work.

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, 27 June 2011 04:16 CDT

user31869

The System - System Restore Points is enabled and the notice has always appeared in the footer (it drew my attention from the very beginning).
However, I haven't seen Akeeba Backup popping up while upgrading the aforementioned extensions.
Using Firefox 5.0 and Chromium 12 on Ubuntu 11.04.

Monday, 27 June 2011 04:27 CDT

nicholas

OK, this will sound like a series of stupid questions on my part, but I want to make sure we've got all the bases covered.

1. Were these two extensions already installed and did an upgrade, or were they installed for the first time? SRPs will only kick in on extension upgrades.

2. If the extensions were already installed, please go inside each extension's back-end directory (e.g. administrator/components/com_componentsname) and look at all of the XML files. Akeeba Backup's SRPs look for XML manifest files named either manifest.xml or componentname.xml (where componentname is the same as the com_componentname name of the directory). If the XML manifest's filename is named anything different, SRPs won't work. Please note that I didn't "invent" this standard; it is the guidelines published on the Joomla! documentation wiki and, as a matter of fact, Joomla! 1.6 and later won't accept installing components which do not follow this naming convention for the XML files.

All and all, you can ask the extension developers to include SRP support in their products. We have published the guidelines to doing so in our documentation and, if they have any questions, they can contact me directly. I have cooperated with other extension developers and I'll continue to do that so that we can make Joomla! even more awesome ;)

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, 27 June 2011 04:57 CDT

user31869

1. They existed, of course :) I don't upgrade from thin air :D

2. Joomfish certainly has a manifest.xml:
root@li199-121:~# ls /var/www/xxxxxx/administrator/components/com_joomfish/
assets config.xml controller.php documentation help index.html joomfish.php models version.php
classes contentelements controllers editors helpers install manifest.xml tables views

And so does FlexiContent

root@li199-121:~# ls /var/www/xxxxxx/administrator/components/com_flexicontent/
admin.flexicontent.php config.xml controllers index.html install.php models uninstall.php
assets controller.php elements installation manifest.xml tables views

I am testing SRP on these extensions precisely because they are well written.

Edited by nicholas on 2011-06-27 05:00 CDT

Monday, 27 June 2011 04:59 CDT

user31869

(Aghh, can you edit my previous post so that the abs path is concealed? Thanks!)

Monday, 27 June 2011 05:03 CDT

nicholas

OK, that's strange :s I can't reproduce it here with PHP 5.2.17 and 5.3.6. Last stupid question from me before having to resort to asking access to your site's back-end: do these manifest.xml files have at least 0644 permissions?

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, 27 June 2011 05:16 CDT

user31869

Yep, 644.

ls -l /path/to/administrator/components/com_flexicontent/manifest.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data 7504 2011-06-26 23:21 /path/to/administrator/components/com_flexicontent/manifest.xml

Monday, 27 June 2011 08:56 CDT

nicholas

Please send me a Personal Message (I am user nicholas on this site) with the following information:

1. URL to your site's back-end login page
2. A Super Administrator username and password

This will allow me to log in to your site's back-end and work out the reasons of SRP not working.

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, 28 June 2011 10:19 CDT

nicholas

Thank you for your PM! It turns out that Joomla! always reports to Akeeba Backup that extracting the extension archive failed, so Akeeba Backup refrains from taking a System Restore Point and reverts back to asking the Joomla! installer to handle the situation.

Here's the funky part. Despite Joomla! reporting that extracting the archive fails, it has been extracted and it will still try to install the extension no matter what. And it succeeds. Huh!

Sorry, I have no solution for that. The only viable solution would be for me to completely rewrite the Joomla! extensions installer to make it suck less. But I won't.

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, 28 June 2011 10:30 CDT

user31869

Understandably so :)
Does this behaviour affect 1.5.23 as a whole or just our particular environment?
I have detected the exact same issue on 2 other sites, hosted on two different servers, although all powered by Ubuntu 10.04.

Thanks for taking the time to examine this, btw.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011 10:34 CDT

nicholas

It seems to be the particular server environment. Can you try upgrading to Ubuntu 10.10 and the latest PHP 5.3.x (I think it's 5.3.5) they're offering? If that still fails, I am suspecting Ubuntu's cheesy integration of the Suhosin patch in all of their PHP builds which has caused massive grief to PHP developers. Disclosure: I trashed Ubuntu's PHP builds for Zend Server CE which is far more stable and a bit faster.

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, 28 June 2011 12:44 CDT

user31869

Evil Ubuntu :( Upgrading all the way to 11.04 did not solve anything.
The PHP version is the one you hinted at
HP 5.3.5-1ubuntu7.2 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: May 2 2011 23:00:17)

Given the popularity of this disro, you may consider adding a known issue to the ABP documentation.

Gonna take ZSCE for a spin.

Thanks!

Tuesday, 28 June 2011 12:49 CDT

nicholas

If this recurs with other Ubuntu-based servers, I will add it to the documentation. Right now there's only one documented case (yours). I usually wait until I see a trend developing by at least 3 different confirmed reports before documenting something. There's always the possibility that something else, common between your servers, is the cause but I can't know it for sure (or even what that might be).

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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