Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Tuesday, 02 August 2011 08:55 CDT

user43492

Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Have I searched the forum before posting? yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? yes
Joomla! version: 1.6.1
PHP version: 5
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: (optional, but it helps us help you)
Akeeba Backup version: (unknown)

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:

Having done a Kickstart restore to a new server with a new URL the site has been working fine and we have been able to administer everything...

Having logged out and back in again we have one icon in Administrator that says "Backup Required". On pressing it there are two RED errors appearing stating that the tmp directory and backup directory are not writable...

The next screen shows the old site url not the new one.

How do I get to see any of my other icons in administrator screen or reset the variables for akeebackup please.

Regards,

Chris.

Tuesday, 02 August 2011 10:02 CDT

nicholas

These are actually two completely independent issues.

The first issue is having a blank Joomla! control panel page, showing nothing than Akeeba Backup's backup notification module. This happens due to a known bug in Joomla! which breaks the session and effectively removes all ACL privileges from the current user. The only module on your site which doesn't use ACL is the Akeeba Backup notification module, hence you may perceive that somehow the module caused this issue when, in fact, it's the only "survivor" of this Joomla! bug. In order to work around this bug you have to follow this procedure:
- Close all windows showing pages from your site
- Using phpMyAdmin remove all of the contents of your jos_session table (not the table itself, but all of its contents)
- Using FTP, clear the contents of your site's cache and administrator/cache directories
- Clear your browser cookie and cache
- Shut down your browser and restart your computer
Log back into your site. If the problem persists, try this one more.

The second issue is that the backup output and temporary directories are reported as non writable. This is easy to fix. Just go to Components, Akeeba Backup and click on the Configuration button. In there set the following (including the brackets and all in capital letters):
- Backup output directory: [DEFAULT_OUTPUT]
- Temporary directory: [SITETMP]
Then click on Save. This will reset the two directories to their default values and Akeeba Backup should now work properly.

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, 02 August 2011 10:53 CDT

user43492

Dear Nicholas,

Tried the first option above to no avail. Still only have the one icon and nothing else.

I have tried this twice and nothing appears. Where have I gone wrong?

I remember that there was a problem with the components menu not displaying all of its items once before and there was a similar way around it by deleting the contents of a table in mySql.

Any more thoughts.

Regards,

Chris.

Wednesday, 03 August 2011 03:32 CDT

user43492

OK, now sorted. Found out that one of my admins had tried to delete the "Special" user group and removed all of it's permissions. Had to go into the jos_viewlevels table of the database and reset the access id's for the Special user group.

Having done that it everything came back. Backup now works and has been upgraded to latest version.

Thanks.

Wednesday, 03 August 2011 04:18 CDT

nicholas

Yikes! This is the reason I find an admin audit log feature bitterly missing from Joomla!. The most common cause for software and hardware malfunction is PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) - and it's the toughest one to diagnose and debug, nonetheless :) If we had an audit log, it would be easy to trace back the problem to a specific change performed by a specific user.

Well, I'm glad it's all sorted now!

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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