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#12838 problem using emergency offline mode

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Monday, 02 July 2012 02:15 CDT

Sunday, 01 July 2012 11:55 CDT

easytherm
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: 2.6.6
PHP version: 5.3.10
MySQL version: 5.5.21
Host: www.easygiga.com
Admin Tools version: 2.2.9

descriptions of my issues

I suppose I've been hacked. No problem I do have backup and will be able to restore my server.

I would like to use the akeeba admin tools emergency off line features, in order to give website users a very short information what to do until the site is restored. This offline.html file is appended as a zip file.

Problem is, when I put my site offline (is the case now: www.gvmp.aero) I get either a 404 error (on my own PC from wich I put the site off line):
<<Not Found The requested URL /fr/ was not found on this server. Apache/2.2.13 (Rack-Soft) Server at www.gvmp.aero Port 80>>

from another PC, the website just disappeared.

best regards
Jacques

Sunday, 01 July 2012 12:04 CDT

nicholas
(I just closed the other ticket with the same subject)

Accessing http://www.gvmp.aero from my Mac causes the http://www.gvmp.aero/offline.html file to appear. This is normal and it means the Emergency Off Line mode (EOM) is working. However, as you might have read in the documentation, when your site is in EOM all SEF URLs no longer work. You can't have SEF URLs and EOM at the same time, unfortunately. While you are debugging your site you have to go to Global Configuration and set the SEF URLs off.

On the other site you mentioned in the other ticket there was no offline.html file and the site was not set to EOM.

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!

Sunday, 01 July 2012 13:22 CDT

easytherm
Hi Nicholas,
thank you for your as usual very quick answer, and excuse me for having sent 2 same tickets.
I've disabled SEF. I can reach my offline page if I call it directly (www.gvmp.aero/offline.html),
but when I call the "normal" website name www.gvmp.aero or www.gvmp.ch, I get the 404 error. If you have a look on my appended file you see that www.gvmp.aero/fr/ is returned.

My site is multi lingual (fr en de).

Do you have any idea, what is wrong in my setting?

Sunday, 01 July 2012 13:51 CDT

nicholas
If you try accessing your site from your own IP address you will never see the offline.html page. That's what EOM is supposed to do. If you try accessing the site form a different IP (e.g. a mobile phone connected to the Internet via 3G, but not over Wi-Fi to the same router your PC is connected on) you will see the offline.html page successfully, just like I do from over here.

Regarding the remaining issue, it's caused by a core Joomla! plugin. Go to your site's back-end and disable the "System - Language Filter" plugin. Then go to Global Configuration and make sure that "Search Engine Friendly URLs" is set to No. If you are using a third party SEF component (e.g. sh404SEF, AceSEF, ...) please also make sure that it's disabled as per its developer's instructions. Otherwise it may still be generating SEF URLs, despite your Global Configuration setting. Finally, please clear your browser's cache.

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!

Sunday, 01 July 2012 14:13 CDT

easytherm
thank a lot for your suggestions.
I just tried with a smartphone connected over Wifi and the offline page wasn't there.

I suppose all home's PC (over the same router) will react the same

I'll try the other items from my office's location later on to check with another IP. Will keep you informed.

concerning my 3 same tickets, I sure wasn't trying to wake you up;-)
Maybe this can be interesting to you: I sent a ticket, got the feedback "message sent", but couldn't see it in "my tickets", so I thought "I made a mistake", I needed 3 tries but still nothing in my tickets. I then saw I was on page 2 of the ticket list, went to page 1, and saw my stupid tickets, but no option to cancel any.

Have a good evening!

Sunday, 01 July 2012 14:44 CDT

nicholas
Hm, I'm trying very hard to debug this "my tickets don't show up" issue. Murphy's Law kicks in really hard: whenever I try issuing test tickets with a new user account I can see the tickets just fine. Ugh! More troubleshooting to do I guess.

Regarding your site, I just retried visiting http://www.gvmp.aero. It still shows the offline.html page just fine. Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera on my MacBook Pro. If you check your logs and see an IP from Greece, that's me :) If you have any more doubts, I can fire up my Win7 laptop and check with IE9 as well.

However, I can tell you upfront what the problem is:
I just tried with a smartphone connected over Wifi and the offline page wasn't there.
Since you're connected on Wi-Fi, you share the same public IP with all of your PCs and other Internet connected devices. That's why I said you need to use your cell connected over 3G. This is the only way to give it a different IP address. Remember, EOM filters by IP address. All devices under the same IP as the device which activated EOM will have access to the site. Only if you access your site through a different IP shall you see the offline.html 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!

Sunday, 01 July 2012 15:25 CDT

easytherm
Hello,
my kids are sleeping and I went to my office. 10km with my bicycle.
Different Ip, offline.html displaying as expected by calling the gvmp.aero or gvmp.ch
same behaviour for the front and the backend. Thats's very fine and exactly what I expected. In this actual situation SEF is set to NO and "System - Language Filter" is disabled.

You opened a missunderstanding with the languages and the SEF. Does the emergency offline mode work correctly (as described in the above paragraph) if either SEF is set to YES or "System - Language Filter" is active?. In other words do my website users see the offline.html screen


Sunday, 01 July 2012 15:32 CDT

nicholas
Emergency Off-Line is activated immediately, no matter what your SEF mode is and so on. Visitors from different IPs will always see the offline.html page.

The only difference is what happens when you visit your site from "your" IP, i.e. the IP from which you activated EOM. EOM works by overwriting your .htaccess file. By doing that, it screws up SEF URLs until you disable EOM. Remember, since your visitors see the offline.html file, the SEF URLs are indifferent to them, they can't access them anyway. They only matter to you. Since EOM's .htaccess doesn't allow you to use SEF URLs you have to disable the SEF URLs option in Global Configuration and any SEF components. Since Joomla!'s language plugin may try adding a language code to your site's URL, you have to disable that too. Strictly speaking, you only have to do that if you want to access your site from "your" IP while EOM is enabled.

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!

Sunday, 01 July 2012 15:42 CDT

easytherm
Ok that's very clear now for me and I can use the settings knowing the exact background.

Once again, many thanks and have a good night!

Monday, 02 July 2012 02:15 CDT

nicholas
You're welcome!

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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