Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Sunday, 16 January 2011 22:20 CST

user2741

Hi There, sorry to bug you with something that comes up so often in the forum.. but I have read through the forums before posting and tried everything I can work out.

(Add note: My host did move me from a lightspeed server, to an apache server a couple of months ago, but I am pretty sure that it was working after the move, but cannot be 100% after christmas cheer )

So things where working fine for a long time, but now I am getting the error:

Backup Failed

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

Invalid AJAX data:

Please click the 'View Log' button on the toolbar to view the Akeeba Backup log file for further information.

Before posting to the support forum for assistance please read the User Guide first!.

I have updated to the latest version... checked permissions, run the configurator wizard, excluded the backup and tmp directory, made sure my _bak and _tmp are under the site root ( which I dont like but : ) .. And I have upped my min ex time to the full 20 sec to test as per help bubble..

I have also looked through the log, but I cant see any errors to help me work it out??

Can someone please have a look throught the log and see if there is something I am missing, is there is an error showing, and if there is, point out what I can look for in the future to try and find these sorts of problems without bothering people :)

Any other thoughts or suggestions more than welcome.

Many thanks in advance

Michael Tull

Edited by user2741 on 2011-01-16 22:26 CST

Monday, 17 January 2011 05:30 CST

nicholas

Please send me the URL and Super Administrator login details to your site by means of a direct Personal Message. I am user "nicholas". This will allow me to debug this issue directly on your server.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please include a link back to this post, otherwise it's impossible for me to know why you're sending me the PM.

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, 17 January 2011 18:50 CST

user2741

Hi Nicolas,

I have PM'd you the detail.. if you have any troubles, please let me know.

Regards

Michael Tull

Tuesday, 18 January 2011 01:56 CST

nicholas

You had set the minimum execution time to 20 seconds, which guaranteed that Akeeba Backup would timeout. You meant to have changed the maximum execution time setting. Be very careful with these options; they are called "fine-tuning" for a good reason ;)

As soon as I fixed that problem in your configuration, the backup started normally. When it got stuck, I took a look at the log and tried a few options. It seems like you are running out of disk space. Please check your disk quota with your host. As a rule of thumb, we suggest having 40-50% of your quota free before your first backup.

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, 19 January 2011 09:49 CST

user10367

Hey,

I seem to be experiencing the same problem.
Everything went fine for months, untill today.

I'am not such an expirienced user, so I have included the logfile.

Hopefully someone can help me?

Kind regards,
Christophe

Wednesday, 19 January 2011 16:22 CST

nicholas

The version you are using is no longer supported. Please install 3.1.5 or 3.2.b4. If that doesn't solve your issue, please post a new thread to the Akeeba Backup Core forum. This section of the forum, as the title implies, is dedicated to subscribers of the Professional release only.

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, 19 January 2011 18:20 CST

user2741

Hi Nicholas..

Sorry so long to reply.. and thank you for having a look at this for me.

Sorry about the exicution time thing :) .. that was me trying to find a way to get it to work before bothering you.

With the disk space side.. I have contacted the host. The site is on one of those unlimited space plans, so my CP say I have plenty of space, but of course I understand that 'unlimited' is impossible :) ... so I will see what they come back with.

Can you tell me where in the log file ( what should I look for ) that would tell me when this is happening? The host is usually pretty good so hopefully it wont get into a 'whos fault' situation.. but if I know what I am looking for in the log, I can point it out to them and hopfully stop any back and forth :)

Again, thank you very much for all your help so far!

Regards

Michael Tull

Thursday, 20 January 2011 01:38 CST

nicholas

The unlimited space plans are not unlimited at all. I had three other cases in the last 30 days where the host claimed "unlimited" space but was limiting it to 1Gb. That makes sense doesn't it? No host could provide you with Terabytes of space for pennies, or they'd be out of business in a heartbeat ;) I suggest asking your host about your free space.

Reading the logs requires some experience. I know how Akeeba Backup works under the hood. In that case I saw a file being added. Then nothing happens. A few minutes later I only see an attempt to load the Kettenrad (that's the pet name of the Akeeba Engine's main workhorse class) instance when I had to visit the Control Panel in order for the backup to be reset. This means that a server error occurred while backing up the file. Experience tells me that the only error that can happen at that stage is running out of disk space and the host killing the script which tries to "deplete" the hard disk space.

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, 20 January 2011 08:26 CST

user2741

Thank you so much Nicholas,

I have the host on the line (helpdesk) now.. I fully understand the 'unlimited' :) .. I will see how I go with it.

One odd thing to mention, is that I tried another backup tool ( well, there really is only one other on the ED : ) and it went through ok, and backed everything up.. I only did this as I wanted to get a backup before going live ( about 20 min away ) .. Also did a manual backup / sql dump etc to be safe.. Also worth nothing, that I used CPanel, to create an archive of the entire site ( over 500mb with other stuff than Joomla ) and it worked.. so it seems odd that it would be disk space when I can create an archive of over 500mb with Cpanel..

Could it be a server / scrip / ownership issue? Have you seen anything like that before?

Anyway.. I will see what the host tells me and come back if I get anything more solid.

Many thanks again for all you assistance with this.. Hopfully we can get it resolved

Regards

Michael Tull

Thursday, 20 January 2011 12:20 CST

nicholas

Please send me the URL and Super Administrator login details to your site by means of a direct Personal Message. I am user "nicholas". This will allow me to debug this issue directly on your server.

VERY IMPORTANT: Please include a link back to this post, otherwise it's impossible for me to know why you're sending me the PM.

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, 20 January 2011 17:49 CST

nicholas

I managed to solve this issue by switching the Archiver Engine from JPA to ZIP. I am not sure why this would ever happen. Please do not withdraw my access from the site for another 2-3 days, as I want to make sure I get to the bottom of this and fix it. Thanks!

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, 20 January 2011 17:50 CST

nicholas

Forgot to mention... The backup archive size is about 300Mb. This is less than the cPanel backup (500Mb) because cPanel also backs up your email records and your temporary and cache directories. Akeeba Backup doesn't back those up.

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!

Friday, 21 January 2011 05:19 CST

nicholas

After spending 5 hours directly debugging the script on your server, I came to a conclusion: your server is unreliable. I have proof about my claims.

Akeeba Backup doesn't have a bug. It doesn't throw a PHP Fatal Error. In fact, each step executes completely to its very end, where it returns the data back to the browser using a standard PHP echo() command. However, your server will randomly not return the output to the browser. Instead, it simply closes the connection with an HTTP status of 200, returns no HTTP headers and NO output. In other words, your server will randomly stop serving pages. When I say randomly, I mean really randomly. Using the exact same configuration I got a dropped request after 1, 10, 15, 12, 13 and 7 steps. Remember the same code, the same data, the same server, the same operation.

Sorry, I can't do anything about broken servers which randomly drop requests. All I can tell you is to get some reliable hosting. It doesn't have to be expensive. For example, on of the most reliable hosts I've used is Rochen Host. Rochen's shared hosting plans (exceptionally good for sites up to 150,000 pageviews per month, tested by yours truly) only cost 8 USD per month.

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!

Edited by nicholas on 2011-01-21 05:22 CST

Friday, 21 January 2011 07:10 CST

user2741

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks you soo much for spending all this time.. Honestly, way above and beyond the call! I cant do anything but say thank you, and say that I will always continue to use subscribe to your pro product.. it has always worked for me apart from this one time!

I really didn't thing it was a bug with Akeeba.. It was working perfectly for almost a year before they moved me to this new server after a hack, so that I could run OSE security software correctly ( Was running OSE with Akeeba before the move, just with an insecure activation, so it isn't that : ).. I was really just looking for help to track down the issue, and you have done that and so much more.

I still have not heard anything back from the host!
which surprises me as they have actually been unexpectedly reliable up to this point for an ultra cheap host, and always very helpful, and fixed any problems quickly but I think this one ( and this new server ) might be beyond them. I will pass on your comments.

I have looked at Rochen in the past for this site, but I wanted to get it launched.. it was about 6 months behind schedule :) .. There are lots of users, but not a lot of traffic, so once the 12 months are up, I will probably look at it.. or something more robust again if the site traffic and content grows to meet the 6000 odd users.

Anyway, again, thank you..

Regards

Michael Tull

Edited by user2741 on 2011-01-21 07:11 CST

Friday, 21 January 2011 07:23 CST

nicholas

Thank you for your kind words! Upgrading to a reliable hosting is really worth the trouble. When the time comes, you'll understand why I insist so much right now ;)

If you get stuck somewhere don't hesitate to post back!

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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