Support

Site Restoration

#16645 cannot extract archive to restore

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Friday, 05 July 2013 10:28 CDT

Monday, 01 July 2013 19:18 CDT

cjmicro
Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? yes
Have I searched the tickets before posting? yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? yes
Joomla! version: 1.5.26
PHP version: (5.3)
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: (localhost on WAMP)
Akeeba Backup version which took the backup: Akeeba Backup Professional 3.4.3 (2012-03-21)
Kickstart version used to extract the backup: (tried diff versions most recent and an older one)

Description of my issue:
tried to use kickstart.php on the local/wamp first i got the message about an invalid header
<<Invalid header in archive file, part 0, offset 1784500591>>

So then I downloaded the extract wizard and tried to extract locally first. i get an error on that saying it's an invalid archive format. I have tried this with 2 different jpa files. the filesize is about 1.5 gb and it's frustrating because it takes me FOREVER to download the jpa file. I do not get any error when backing up on the site online.

Do you have any suggestions? Thank you,
Cheryl

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 01:12 CDT

nicholas
I will take a wild guess and assume that you are backing up an error_log file in one or more directories (tip: look in the backup log). You have to exclude those files because:
- they only contain error logging information and need not be backed up
- they are usually huge
- they change size all the time, even during backup, leading to corrupt backups if they are included
Newer versions of Akeeba Backup exclude them automatically for this reason.

But, as I said, this is a wild guess because you didn't post your backup log file.

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 July 2013 09:02 CDT

cjmicro
I have the backup profile set to exclude logs. But I will go try that again and see... I wonder if it is my adagency stats that is making the file so big and maybe corrupting it. I will try removing some of the large log/stat files and try again. Thank you.

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 09:38 CDT

nicholas
Well, I have to remind you my subtle hint:
But, as I said, this is a wild guess because you didn't post your backup log file.


If you actually post a ZIP file with the backup log file maybe I can make an educated guess ;)

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 July 2013 10:08 CDT

cjmicro
Ok I got the hint!! It's attached! Thank you.
Cheryl

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 10:22 CDT

nicholas
I can see what the problem is:
INFO |130701 19:45:58|Breaking step _before_ large file: C:/inetpub/vhosts/acsss.info/httpdocs/backup/site-acsss.info-20130701-203708.j01 - size: 154967831

It looks like it is backing up the backup because the server doesn't report the correct real filesystem path to the site. You can exclude the backup directory from the backup.

Off-topic: I am wondering after seeing your surname, do you have any Greek origins?

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 July 2013 10:57 CDT

cjmicro
My husband is Greek, his father came from Greece to the US, but my husband was born here. Still have some relatives in Greece. A cousin in Athens, and I think my husband's family was from Delphi and/or Icaros. I'm German just Greek by marriage :-)

Thanks for the info, I will see if I can get this to work!

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 11:02 CDT

nicholas
You're welcome and thank you for satisfying my curiosity regarding your surname :)

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 July 2013 16:31 CDT

cjmicro
I still cant' get it to work. Trying to use akeeba extractor I get invalid archive format from the .jpa file

I have tried to exclude everything (files directory database tables) I can think of. Here is my most recent backup log file.

I can pm you admin access if you want to look at my settings, or let me know what else I can try. Maybe I am not excluding the right things or excluding them properly.

Thank you.

Cheryl

Wednesday, 03 July 2013 01:40 CDT

nicholas
How exactly are you downloading this file to your computer?

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, 05 July 2013 10:18 CDT

cjmicro
I download the backup (jpa) file to my computer through FTP (smart ftp is the program I use).

Friday, 05 July 2013 10:19 CDT

nicholas
I think that your FTP programme is downloading the file either in Text (ASCII) or Auto mode, corrupting it on transfer. Please use Filezilla, setting it to use the Binary transfer mode.

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, 05 July 2013 10:25 CDT

cjmicro
I just did that!! I saw in the documentation where you should UPLOAD backups in binary format, but didn't have it set to download that way. I set it up on smart FTP to transfer in binary format and am downloading AGAIN! :-) Thank you, will keep you posted.

Friday, 05 July 2013 10:28 CDT

nicholas
Yes, the requirement to use binary transfer applies to both download and upload. Most FTP clients default to binary if they don't know that a file is definitely text. Some lesser known FTP clients... screw up and use ASCII transfer by default. Usually the only way to see this discrepancy is comparing the exact file size in bytes on the server and the computer. If they differ, it's either downloaded in ASCII mode (if the downloaded size is bigger) or partially downloaded (if the downloaded size is smaller)

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!

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

Support policy: We would like to kindly inform you that when using our support you have already agreed to the Support Policy which is part of our Terms of Service. Thank you for your understanding and for helping us help you!