Support

The front-end backup feature is intended to provide the capability to perform an unattended, scheduled backups of your site.

The front-end backup URL performs a single backup step and sends a redirection (HTTP 302) header to force the client to advance to the next page, which performs the next step and so forth. You will only see a message upon completion, should it be successful or not. There are a few limitations, though:

Before beginning to use this feature, you must set up Akeeba Solo to support the front-end backup option. First, go to Akeeba Solo's main page and click on the System Configuration button. Find the option titled Enable front-end and remote backups and set it to Yes. Below it, you will find the option named Secret key. In that box you have to enter a password which will allow your CRON job to convince Akeeba Solo that it has the right to request a backup to be taken. Think of it as the password required to enter the VIP area of a night club. After you're done, click the Save & Close button on top to save the settings and close the dialog.

Most hosts offer a CPanel of some kind. There has to be a section for something like "CRON Jobs", "scheduled tasks" and the like. The help screen in there describes how to set up a scheduled job. One missing part for you would be the command to issue. Simply putting the URL in there is not going to work.

If you are on a UNIX-style OS host (usually, a Linux host) you most probably have access to a command line utility called wget. It's almost trivial to use:

wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?

view=remote&key=YourSecretKey"

For Akeeba Backup for WordPress you should instead use

wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?

action=akeebabackup_legacy&key=YourSecretKey"

Of course, the line breaks are included for formatting clarity only. You should not have a line break in your command line!

If you're unsure, check with your host. Sometimes you have to get from them the full path to wget in order for CRON to work, thus turning the above command line to something like:

/usr/bin/wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?

view=remote&key=YourSecretKey"

Likewise, for Akeeba Backup for WordPress that would be:

/usr/bin/wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/

admin-ajax.php?action=akeebabackup_legacy&key=YourSecretKey"

Contact your host; they usually have a nifty help page for all this stuff. Read also the section on CRON jobs below.

Optionaly, you can also include an extra parameter to the above URL, &profile=profile_id, where profile_id is the numeric ID of the profile you want to use for the backup. If you don't specify this parameter, the default backup profile (ID=1) will be used. In this sense, the aforementioned URL becomes:

/usr/bin/wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?

view=remote&key=YourSecretKey&profile=profile_id"

Likewise for Akeeba Backup for WordPress that would be

/usr/bin/wget --max-redirect=10000 "http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/

admin-ajax.php?action=akeebabackup_legacy&key=YourSecretKey&profile=profile_id"

wget is multi-platform command line utility program which is not included with all operating systems. If your system does not include the wget command, it can be downloaded at this address: http://wget.addictivecode.org/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#download. The wget homepage is here: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/wget.html. Please note that the option --max-redirect is available on wget version 1.11 and above.

If you have enabled password protection by .htaccess for your Akeeba Solo installation you will need to also supply this common username and password in wget's command line. The correct command line will now look like this:

wget --max-redirect=10000 --user=yourUsername --password=yourPassword

"http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?view=remote&key=YourSecretKey"

(for Akeeba Backup for WordPress replace index.php?view=remote with /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=akeebabackup_legacy)

where yourUsername is the common username and yourPassword is the common password.

Using webcron.org to automate your backups

Assuming that you have already bought some credits on webcron.org, here's how to automate your backup using their service.

First, go to Akeeba Solo's main page and click on the System Configuration button. Find the option titled Enable front-end and remote backup and set it to Yes. Below it, you will find the option named Secret key. Type in a secret key. We strongly recommend using only alphanumeric characters, i.e. 0-9, a-z and A-Z. For the sake of this example, we will assume that you have entered ak33b4s3cRet in that field. We will also assume that your site is accessible through the URL http://www.example.com.

Log in to webcron.org. In the CRON area, click on the New Cron button. Here's what you have to enter at webcron.org's interface:

Now click on Submit and you're all set up!

A PHP alternative to wget

As user DrChalta pointed out in a forum post, there is an alternative to wget, as long as your PHP installation has the cURL extension installed and enabled. For starters, you need to save the following PHP script as backup.php somewhere your host's cron feature can find it. Please note that this is a command-line script and needn't be located in your site's root; it should be preferably located above your site's root, in a non web-accessible directory.

The script below is a modification over DrChalta's original script, taking into account changes made in later versions of our software. In order to configure it for your server, you only have to change the first three lines.

(for Akeeba Backup for WordPress replace index.php?view=remote with /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=akeebabackup_legacy)

<?php
define('SITEURL', 'http://www.example.com'); // Base URL of your site
define('SECRETKEY', 'MySecretKey'); // Your secret key
define('PROFILE',1); // The profile's ID

// ====================== DO NOT MODIFY BELOW THIS LINE ======================
$curl_handle=curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_URL,
SITEURL.'/index.php?view=remote&key='.
SECRETKEY.'&profile='.PROFILE);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION,TRUE);
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS,10000); # Fix by Nicholas
curl_setopt($curl_handle,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
if (empty($buffer))
    echo "Sorry, the backup didn't work.";
else
    echo $buffer;
?>

Where www.yoursite.com and YourSecretKey should be set up as discussed in the previous section.

In order to call this script with a schedule, you need to put something like this to your crontab (or use your host's CRON feature to set it up):

0 3 * * 6 /usr/local/bin/php /home/USER/backups/backup.php

Where /usr/local/bin/php is the absolute path to your PHP command-line executable and /home/USER/backups/backup.php is the absolute path to the script above.

If you set up your cron schedule with a visual tool (for example, a web interface), the command to execute part is "/usr/local/bin/php /home/USER/backups/backup.php".

Thank you DrChalta for this wonderful tip!

Using the front-end backup in SiteGround and other hosts using cURL instead of wget

As one of our users pointed out in the support forum, finding the correct command to issue for the CRON job is tricky. What he writes applies not only to his host, SiteGround, but many other commercial hosts as well. We'll simply quote our user, bzcoder.

In the CPanel for SiteGround there is a cronjob option, you create a cronjob using that and use:

curl -b /tmp/cookies.txt -c /tmp/cookies.txt -L --max-redirs 1000 -v "<url>"

as your command.

Replace <url> with your backup URL. Make sure to use the URL displayed in the Schedule Automatic Backups page.

If you have access to the command-line version of PHP, Akeeba Solo Professional includes an even better - and faster - way of scheduling your backups. All Akeeba Solo Professional releases include the file cli/backup.php, which can be run from the command-line PHP interface (PHP CLI). In contrast with previous releases, it doesn't require the front-end backup in order to work; it is self-contained, native backup for your sites, even if your web server software is down!

In order to schedule a backup, you will have to use the following command line to your host's CRON interface:

/usr/local/bin/php /home/USER/webroot/cli/backup.php

where /usr/local/bin/php is the path to your PHP CLI executable and /home/USER/webroot is the absolute path to your web site's root. You can get this information from your host.

The backup script accepts three optional parameters:

The backup.php script will return a different exit code, depending on the backup status. When the backup is successful and without warnings, the exit code will be 0. When the backup completed but with warnings, the exit code will be 1. Finally, if the backup fails, the exit code will be 2. This allows you to check the backup status, for example inside a shell script, for automation purposes.

In order to give some examples, I will assume that your PHP CLI binary is located in /usr/local/bin/php - a common setting among hosts - and that your web site's root is located at /home/johndoe/httpdocs.

It goes without saying that the line breaks are for readability only. You should not include line breaks in your command line.

Special considerations:

Setting up a CRON job on cPanel

Go to your cPanel main page and choose the CRON Jobs icon from the Advanced pane. In the Add New CRON Job box on the page which loads, enter the following information:

Finally, click the Add New Cron Job button to activate the CRON job.

Overriding configuration variables

The Native CRON Script allows you to override or supply missing configuration variables in the command line. This is especially useful for security reasons. One security issue with the cloud storage service integration is that other administrators can peek at Akeeba Solo's configuration and read the username, password or API keys used to access the cloud storage service. You can, however, leave these fields blank in the configuration and supply their values in the command line.

Overriding a configuration variable requires knowing its key name. The key names are represented in dot-format, i.e. engine.postproc.s3.accesskey for Amazon S3's access key. Determining the key name is quite easy, as they are stored in INI files throughout the component's back-end. The first location you should look at is vendor/akeeba/engine/engine/core, where you will find four INI files with general settings. Inside the vendor/akeeba/engine/engine/engines and vendor/akeeba/engine/engine/plugins/engines directories and their subdirectories you will find one INI file per engine.

In order to save you from trouble, here are the most useful key names for providing cloud storage engine credentials. The names are designed to be self-explanatory.

Applying them on the command line is easy. Take this command line as an example:

usr/local/bin/php /home/johndoe/httpdocs/cli/backup.php
--profile=2 --description="My automated backup"
--override="engine.postproc.s3.accesskey=ABCDEF"
--override="engine.postproc.s3.secretkey=1234567890abcdefgh"

In this case, we are telling the backup script to use the backup Profile with ID=2, give the backup description of "My automated backup" and then supply the S3 access and secret keys.

Finally, it should be noted that you can use the command-line override feature to do more tricky configuration overrides, for example turning off the archive splitting or using a different backup output directory to enhance your security. If it's something you can do in the Configuration page of the component, you can also do it using command line overrides.

On some hosts it is impossible to use the native CRON script outlined in the previous section. On such hosts the CRON script will get aborted if it is using too much CPU time, or if the system load exceeds a value predefined by your host company. In order to accomodate for these hosts, Akeeba Solo includes an alternative CRON script. The alternative CRON script performs the backup by using the front-end backup feature of Akeeba Solo. The alternative CRON script must be run from the command-line PHP interface (PHP CLI).

In order to schedule a backup, you will have to use the following command line to your host's CRON interface:

/usr/local/bin/php /home/USER/webroot/cli/altbackup.php

where /usr/local/bin/php is the path to your PHP CLI executable and /home/USER/webroot is the absolute path to your web site's root. You can get this information from your host.

The backup script accepts the following optional parameters:

In order to give some examples, we will assume that your PHP CLI binary is located in /usr/local/bin/php - a common setting among hosts - and that your web site's root is located at /home/johndoe/httpdocs.

It goes without saying that the line breaks are for readability only. You should not include line breaks in your command line.

Special considerations:

If you are seeking assistance in our forums regarding a failed CRON job, please indicate if and which of these steps you have already tried. Not doing so will hinder our ability to help you in a timely manner.

Setting up a CRON job on cPanel

Go to your cPanel main page and choose the CRON Jobs icon from the Advanced pane. In the Add New CRON Job box on the page which loads, enter the following information:

Finally, click the Add New Cron Job button to activate the CRON job.

Special notes for GoDaddy

According to our users who have tried this, this laternative script does work with GoDaddy. The command line you have to use is:

/usr/local/php5/bin/php "$HOME/html/cli/altbackup.php" --profile=YourProfileID

where YourProfileID is the numeric profile number you want to use for your backup job.

The PHP executable we are using is the CLI rather than the default CGI. This is important; if you use the CGI executable then the script will not run. Don't forget to enable frontend backup and insert your secret word. To enable frontend backup go to Akeeba Solo under components, select configuration, select options from the navigation, then select the front-end backup tab to enable the settings.

If the backup completes successfully but the backup appears as "Failed" in the Manage Backups page, you'll have to apply a workaround. Go to Akeeba Solo and select your backup profile from the drop-down list. Then click on the Configuration button. In the configuration page check the Use database storage for temporary data option.