Support

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 -- Yes
Joomla! version: 1.5.24
PHP version: 5.3.1
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: localhost running on xampp
Akeeba Backup version: 3.3.4

Description of my issue:

Nicholas, I have tried everything to figure this out! I am unable to restore locally on my Windows machine using XAMPP via Kickstart (3.3.2). The Kickstart screen comes up but as soon as it begins the extraction, it errors out with "Invalid AJAX Data."

I've narrowed it down this way:

1) It's not a problem with the backup file itself, because I can restore it using Kickstart elsewhere (for example, in a folder on the production site)

2) It's not a global problem with Kickstart or my local machine because I can restore backups from other sites locally with no trouble

3) It's not just one file. For this particular site, all backups taken via Remote Control and those taken on the back-end will fail on local restore with that AJAX error.

4) I don't think it's a memory_limit problem (564M) or a space problem (365G available out of 465G on this drive). Plus I have successfully restored other, bigger sites locally with no trouble.

So it seems to be ONLY this site's backups and ONLY locally. Must be something with my local settings ... what could it be?

I recently had a lot of trouble with this site -- I discovered painfully during and after a bunch of upgrades (Joomla, Akeeba Backup, Remote Control, Admin Tools) that my backups weren't restorable (I was including an unwriteable directory which I corrected). After many hours of troubleshooting with help from your site and reading the forum, I finally figured out that and some other backup-related issues on my own. So to the best of my knowledge the backups are now fine both locally and via Remote Control, no errors, and they will restore elsewhere. Just not locally.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Laurie

Hi Nicholas -- Unfortunately that IS the whole error. Kickstart starts up fine but when it gets to the Extraction screen, it stops almost immediately and says:

Invalid AJAX data received:
START OVER
Can't get it to work? Click me
(which incidentally is not clickable)

The file it stops on is typically one of the language files -- this time it was:
C:/xampp/htdocs/cdsc/installation/lang/nb.ini

The progress bar is at maybe 1% when the extraction fails -- but it IS creating the installation directory and starting to populate it.

I have been through the troubleshooter with no luck, and to me it doesn't seem to be a permissions issue anyway -- I can use kickstart on backups from other sites in that exact same folder with no trouble.

Since I had earlier trouble with backups on this site, I am nervous that even though these recent backups APPEAR to be taken successfully and APPEAR to be restorable under the right conditions, this weird local failure means they're actually corrupted or not right in some way.

If I PM you an SA login would you be willing to take a look at this site and one of its backups and tell me if you're confident everything is OK?

Thanks for any help you can provide. I live and die by Akeeba -- it saved me big-time a couple of years ago when I had a Joomla site get hacked -- so I almost literally can't sleep at night unless I know that all my little sites have their backups safely tucked away!!!!

Laurie

Nicholas, believe it or not, even using Extract (3.0.2) won't work! It fails the exact same way -- no error message, but the moment it starts the extraction (within a second or two), it just crashes and shuts down. No error message with Extract, it's just gone. When I look in the directory, I see the installation folder has been created, and it's partially populated, just as with Kickstart, but that's as far as it gets.

No .htaccess file in the directory. I've tried creating new directories and doing all of the permission things in the troubleshooter.

I updated to Backup 3.3.5 last night, no change -- still can't restore this site locally.

Interestingly, I CAN restore on the site's production server (to a draft folder). So whatever is wrong with this site's backups (and it has to be the backups -- I can restore a dozen other sites locally with no trouble) isn't critical I guess, as long as I can restore to production.

But it makes me nervous. And the whole reason for this was that I wanted to restore locally, update a troublesome extension, and then put that back into production. The extension won't update properly on the production server so I feel stuck, I don't know how to move forward with this site.

Any ideas?

Whoops! I did a ton of updates recently, Joomla, Backup, Admin Tools, Kickstart, Remote Control ... I missed Extract.

And great news, the latest version of Extract works on this site's backups, and I used the Akeeba installer from there and the restored site looks good.

Kickstart won't work on this site's backups, and I don't know why, but as long as I can restore locally with Extract, it's liveable. THANKS for helping me walk through it.

Laurie