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Site Restoration

#42273 Unable to connect to the Database: Access denied; you need (at least one of) the SUPER or SYSTEM_VARIABLES_ADMIN privilege(s) for this operation

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
8.1.33
CMS Type
WordPress
CMS Version
5.6
Backup Tool Version
AkeebaBackup 7.5.0
Kickstart version
8.0.6 PRO

Latest post by seoBOXX on Thursday, 18 September 2025 06:07 CDT

Tuesday, 16 September 2025 08:20 CDT

seoBOXX

Hi and Hello from Germany,

i try to restore an older site from one of my customers on a IONOS Server.

Backup-Information:

Host name suv-touren.de
Backup date 2020-12-28 09:56:16 UTC
Akeeba Backup version 7.5.0
PHP version 7.4.3
Root directory /var/www/web28685545/html/suv-touren-2020/

WordPress version 5.6

Current PHP version 8.1.33

I always get this error:

Unable to connect to the Database: Access denied; you need (at least one of) the SUPER or SYSTEM_VARIABLES_ADMIN privilege(s) for this operation

I have no idea what the problem is ... already tried older Kickstart Versions but that made no difference.

Hope you can help.

Best regards,

Andreas

 

Tuesday, 16 September 2025 08:20 CDT

System Task
system
The ticket information has been edited by Andreas Soraru (seoBOXX).

Tuesday, 16 September 2025 08:58 CDT

nicholas

The message already tells you what the problem is: your database user does not have all the privileges to the database required to create the tables, views, etc which were originally backed up. If you do not understand what that means and how to fix it, show this message to your host / systems administrator. They will know what to do.

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, 18 September 2025 04:41 CDT

seoBOXX

Hi Nicholas,

i tried some stuff and spoke to the support and the problem is not depending on access rights to the database. 

I placed some php code to establish a connection to the db on the webspace and it connects without problems to the database, so it cannot be a database or user rights problem.

I also tried a newer backup with following data:

Host name www.michaela-eisloeffel.de
Backup date 2025-08-31 11:52:43 UTC
Akeeba Backup version 7.9.2
PHP version 8.2.6
Root directory /var/www/web23265866/html/michaela-eisloeffel.de/

WordPress version 6.8.2
PHP version 8.1.33

This works without problems, so it has to be a problem with the archive/kickstart ... i have no idea ... 

 

Greets,

Andy

 

Thursday, 18 September 2025 05:32 CDT

nicholas

I just noticed that you are using an ancient version of the software. Version 7.5.0 was released in December 2020, it has been End of Life for years, and predates MySQL 8's deployment on live servers. The error message which comes from your database server says that it's a problem with permissions, one that's caused by a DEFINER statement creating a VIEW. This is something that MySQL 8 started emitting. Your ancient version of the software is not only 5 years and 34 versions behind, it's unable to cope with a database server version which wasn't being used when that software was released.

This is actually an issue I explicitly addressed several years ago. Your new backup was taken with Akeeba Backup 7.9.2 which is a newer (but still old and obsolete) version. It was released in July 2023. By that time, MySQL 8 had been in production use and I had already added the code which addresses the DEFINER statements when dumping VIEWs (it removes the DEFINER statements). As such, the newer backup you took is not affected by this issue and restores fine.

Please bear in mind that both versions of Akeeba Backup you are using are End of Life for quite a few years. There is no reason to use an ancient Akeeba Backup version on your site, especially with the WordPress and PHP versions you gave me. You can use version 9.0.6 released last week. This is the only currently supported version. Please upgrade now. Do not use End of Life versions on your site; I cannot possibly support them, as they have issues which I have already fixed months or years ago. In exceptional circumstances where an old backup is your only backup I can of course work with you to find a workaround but it will be painful for both of us, very slow to fix, and completely unnecessary since you already have access to your site and can simply upgrade Akeeba 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!

Thursday, 18 September 2025 05:42 CDT

seoBOXX

Hi Nicholas,

just to make it clearer for you. This is the last backup of my clients site from years ago. The client ended his business at that time and wanted a backup for later use. Now i try to restore the backup with the actual Kickstart PRO version to then update the site. So this is not a backup of an only outdated site .. its an old backup of a nopt anymore existing site i want to restore to make it working and then update it.

Is there any way to restore this?

Best Regards,

Andy

Thursday, 18 September 2025 06:02 CDT

seoBOXX

Hi Nicholas,

so in my mind the only working way is to restore the site with the old php enviroment on an mysql 5.x db ... i will give that a try ... i archived the old kickstart also ... i will come back to you.

Best regards,

Andy

Thursday, 18 September 2025 06:07 CDT

seoBOXX

Hi Nicholas,

so now i got qat i needed :-) Everything resored ... now i can update the whole stuff.

Thanks a lot for your time an patience.

Best Regards,

Andy

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