Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Tuesday, 01 November 2011 17:09 CDT

user45163

Description of my issue:

I have a jomsocial site hosted with VPS hosting of hostgator. A few times my website stopped displaying - just blank. When I contacted my host, they discovered the public_html file permissions had been set to 0777, which is not allowed in hostgator vps. After this happened multiple times I contacted Hostgator to find out the root cause. They finally came back with two suggestions, to ensure jomsocial doesnt use 0777 settings and to uninstall akeeba pro.
- i am using jomsocial 2.2.4 and it no longer requires 0777
- i uninstalled akeeba pro, and my site no longer disappears.

- i reinstalled akeeba pro to take a back up, left it installed and my site disappeared next day. so had to uninstall again. Now I am not able to leave the akeeba installed or my public_html get chmod to 0777 randomly. Not when i am taking a back up or something..

I cannot explain the situation any simpler. What is going on...

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
PHP Built On Linux mod.modelsfamily.com 2.6.18-028stab089.1 #1 SMP Thu Apr 14 13:46:04 MSD 2011 x86_64
Database Version 5.1.56
Database Collation utf8_general_ci
PHP Version 5.2.17
Web Server Apache/2.2.21 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.21 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
WebServer to PHP Interface cgi-fcgi
Joomla! Version Joomla! 1.7.0 Stable [ Ember ] 19-Jul-2011 14:00 GMT
Akeeba Backup version: 3.3.4 uninstalled now.

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue.

Tuesday, 01 November 2011 17:25 CDT

nicholas

Nope, you're wrong.

Akeeba Backup only changes the output directory's permissions -and only that!- to 0777 when you are running it on a shared host which does not use suPHP and only if that directory is not directly writable. In this case it also adds a .htaccess file which disallows web access and throws a 403 Forbidden error message.

The very fact that your site disappears when the root directory is chmod'ed to 0777 means that all directories are writeable, therefore there is no need for any directory to be chmod'ed to 0777 by Akeeba Backup.

Furthermore, you would need to have your output or temporary directory set to your site's root. This is not only a bad idea, it is actively checked by Akeeba Backup and when this user error is detected it switches back automatically to the default backup output directory, administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup. The only way to achieve that kind of bad setting is setting an override in a CRON job (if you're using one), but in this case you are a. simply ignoring our explicit warning against doing that found in our documentation and b. you end up with a backup file which has no files –except the installation script and database dump– because Akeeba Backup automatically excludes all of the output directory contents. Still, even in that case, your server setup is such which does not call for a chmod.

If you don't believe me, just grep Akeeba Backup's code for chmod and analyse all of the instances. As you see, there is no what you describe can happen.

Did you try setting up a CRON job yourself which could possibly run some chmod command? That would be the only rational explanation.

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, 02 November 2011 13:37 CDT

user45163

I did not do any change to the default akeeba installation other than upgrading to the pro a few weeks back. but the funny thing is my public_html doesnt get changed to 0777 anymore. I have already uninstalled akeeba pro as per instructions of hostgator support.

I made no other changes. But when i installed akeeba again after a few days to take another back up. It happened again. I am not a professional developer, but i really appreciate the extension as i have been using the standard version for over a year in at least 3 of sites. I upgraded to pro so i could back up to amazon s3 and drop box all of which works perfectly.

if you want i can leave akeeba on and send you the log files if and when the site disappears.

I have read your article on joomla forum about how extension should stop using 0777 and was surprised when the host told me the script is the one chmoding my public_html.

Is it possible some other extension is interfering in some way with akeeba. I have the following components installed
Alpha user points
jomsocial
jmail alerts for jomsocial

PS: I should also note one point.. Till last month i was hosted with hostmonster and i had no issues. This started appearing when i shifted the site to VPS hosting with hostgator.

Wednesday, 02 November 2011 13:41 CDT

nicholas

Look, as I said there is no code in Akeeba Backup which could possibly cause this kind of permissions change. I am not familiar with all of the other extensions you mentioned, so I can't be 100% sure if any of them does anything funky. I would recommend the following approach:
- Uninstall Akeeba Backup Professional
- Make sure that the jos_ak_profiles table does not exist in your database
- Install Akeeba Backup Professional 3.3.5
- Go to Components, Akeeba Backup
- On the page which now displays (post-installation configuration) select only the last checkbox and click the button
- Take a new backup
Normally that should work problem-free.

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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