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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#9078 Error on restoring site with kickstart www.lat.nl

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

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

Latest post by nicholas on Wednesday, 05 October 2011 04:09 CDT

user9421
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes, about Kickstart troubleshooting
Have I searched the forum before posting? Yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? No, I'm using backup and restore on daily basis!
Joomla! version: 1.5.22
PHP version: 5.2.17
MySQL version: 5.0.32-Debian_7etch8-log
Host: (optional, but it helps us help you)
Akeeba Backup version: 3.3.4

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: Screen is full of unreadable text. No restore! See attached file

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Hi!

This looks like a misconfiguration of your server. Instead of executing the kickstart.php file, it delivered it as a text file.

Possible solutions:
1. Re-download Kickstart's ZIP archive, extract it and re-upload all of the files to your server, overwriting existing files. There is a very small chance that the upload of the quite large kickstart.php file failed.
2. If you have a .htaccess file in the site's root, please remove it. It's worth noting that you may not be able to see the .htaccess file through your FTP program as all files starting with a dot are hidden on Linux and other UNIX-derivative operating systems. In this case, just upload an empty text file named .htaccess.
3. If your host has an option to select the PHP version, make sure you have selected PHP 5, PHP 5.2 or PHP 5.3.
3. Try setting the permissions of the file to 0755. Some servers require the executable bit to be set for PHP files to be executed, otherwise they serve them as a plain text file. This had me scratching my head for a few hours a few years back.
5. If nothing of the above helps, please file a support ticket with your host and ask them to take a look as to why the PHP file is served as text instead of being executed.

Please let me know of the outcome of these steps!

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!

user9421
Hi Nicholas,

I tried all your steps. Deleting the .htaccess file is impossible, because the website won';t work. Even not with a empty file.

The only thing which seems to work now is a restore om my XAMPP localhost. It's php 5.3.1.

What do you think? Are the differences between the versions that big that this can be the problem?

Jan

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Sorry, your message slipped through the cracks :s

Reading again the thread, I come to the conclusion that what you have is a server setup problem. Please ask your host to take a look as to why the PHP files download as text files instead of executing. This is usually a misconfiguration of Apache's script handling. FYI, this is configured in two places:
- Apache's configuration (either the server-wide configuration or the virtual host configuration); and
- in the .htaccess file, using the AddHandler/SetHandler directives
In your case -since the PHP file didn't execute even when you removed the .htaccess file- it seems to be something in the Apache configuration which is out of your reach and only your host can modify. The ability to restore the archive on your XAMPP server further attests to that fact; it's not a broken archive or a problem with Kickstart itself, it's the server not "wanting" to run Kickstart.

Cutting a long story short, you need to contact your host. This problem has nothing to do with the code, which is something I could fix, but with the server setup over which both of us have no control :(

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!

user9421
Nicholas,


Hmmmm. Strange. Because I'm backing up and restoring sites every day with the same hosting. Only this site don't work.

When I remove the .htaccess nothing of the site functioned :-(. Even not the backend. So I couldn't make a backup without .htaccess file.

Is the .htaccess file maybe the cause of the problem?


Jan

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Hi!

I think you misunderstood me :) I told you to remove the .htaccess file before running Kickstart, not before backing up the site. So, let's take this from the start.

Which site are you backing up from? What host is it on?

Which site are you restoring to? What host is it on?

This will give me some more context and allow me to better understand what's going on.

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!

user9421
But how to remove the .htaccess file out of a jpa file?


I'm backing up the site http://www.lat.nl - hosting at xs4all.nl

Restoring to http://lat.testjouwsite.nl - hosting at versio.nl


Jan

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
All right. Take a backup of http://www.lat.nl like you have always been doing. Download it to your local PC.

Remove the .htaccess file from lat.testjouwsite.nl. Upload the backup archive and kickstart.php. Then, try doing a restoration using Kickstart.

If the restoration won't run (Kickstart's source code is displayed instead of it running), please contact versio.nl and let them know of the problem with PHP files so that they can fix the server or site setup.

If the site does restore, please note that it may not load. In this case, edit the .htaccess file and remove the last three lines (the one with SetHandler) as they may be incompatible with versio.nl.

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!

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