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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#9182 Backup failures various

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 Sunday, 27 November 2011 15:45 CST

olaeblue
Mandatory information about my setup:

Joomla! version: 1.7.3
PHP version: 5.2.17
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: 1and1.co.uk
Akeeba Backup version: 3.3.7

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 am having repeated backup failures since I updated to Pro. I have cleared out old backup files. which was the initial issue i think, used Admin Tools to fix permissions, split files to 20 Mb and my dropbox has plenty of space.

Some fails seem to be Ajax related, some talk about permissions, I just can't understand or see an common or obvious cause. I'm at a loss.

Any help gratefully received.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Based on this log file, one of the following is going on:
1. You are accessing your Akeeba Backup Control Panel page while a backup is being taken. DON'T do that.
2. You tried to start a new backup while the previous backup had not completed yet.
3. Another backup is already running when you try to take a new backup.

In order to fix the latter issue, I would suggest the following:
- Please make sure that you are not using a scheduled backup, e.g. using CRON on your server or webcron.org
- Make sure that you are not using the "System - Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling" plugin which was deprecated since Akeeba Backup 3.2.5, discontinued since 3.3.a1 and is known to screw up your site since 3.3.5 (and we do try to forcibly uninstall it when you install Akeeba Backup 3.3.5 or later)
- If the above won't help, try removing all files from your backup output directory. The default location is administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup but you may have overridden this in the configuration.

If the above don't help, please tell me the exact error message you see on your screen (just telling "AJAX error" doesn't help, I need the full error message) and ZIP and attach your log file 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!

olaeblue
Thanks for quick response.
Have deleted all files in backup folder.
System - Akeeba Lazy Backup is not shown in Extension manager so think it is deleted already
Don't know how to use CRON so assume not doing that :-)

Have pressed backup button now & will leave Joomla alone for an hour to see how it goes.

olaeblue
Failure message

The backup operation has been halted because an error was detected.
The last error message was:

AJAX Loading Error
HTTP Status: 0 (error)
Internal status: error
XHR ReadyState: 0
Raw server response:

The only thing of note was the laptop went into 'snooze' while I was waiting reading a book. This message was visible when I woke it up. Is this the reason?

olaeblue
BTW Dropbox has files j02 to j45

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
OK, this is a more sane log file and your explanation gave us the solution. Your PC going to sleep killed the backup.

When your PC goes into sleep mode, it actually turns itself off which means that the network connection is cut off. This is equivalent to closing the Backup Now page. Remember the warning on the top of that page which tells you not to close or navigate away from this page while the backup is in progress? Essentially, your PC did what the warning on that page explicitly told you not to do.

And I will further explain this. In order for the backup to not time out, we have to split it to smaller chunks called "steps". However, your server can only run one step at a time. We have to somehow tell it to go on with the next step, and the one after that and so on until the backup is complete. How can we do that? By having your browser send your server some commands through AJAX. Essentially, your browser tells your server to go on and your server replies to your browser how far it's into the backup. When the browser-server connection is severed in mid-process, the browser has no idea what the heck is going on and throws an AJAX error.

So, just tell your computer NOT to go into sleep mode while the backup is running and make sure that your Internet connection does not disconnect during backup.

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!

olaeblue
Thanks. The issue is the backup is taking over an hour so I need to remember to turn off sleep mode each time.

I think I need to work on a better basckup strategy as currently I'm doing a full backup every time (as the site is rapidly growing and I don't want to lose anything) and I suspect I need to find a regime that is full weekly and incremental in between but I haven't got my head how this would work and how I could then reinstall. Is there a real 'idiots guide' to backup strategies you could suggest? :-)

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

I would suggest that you read our Automating Your Backup section of the documentation. The easiest, fool-proof method of backup automation is using the instructions on that page with webcron.org. Since it's a web service, you don't even need to have your PC turned on; it will backup your site for you and will only cost you about 3$ / month for daily backups or even less if you only plan on doing weekly backups. In fact, all you'll have to do is turn on your PC in the morning and let DropBox sync the new backup archives. Or you could try creating a CRON job on your own server and not have to pay anything. IMHO, spending a couple of bucks per month to have peace of mind is worth it, so I'd go with webcron.org any time :)

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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