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#27823 .htaccess generated by Admin Tools prevents kickstart from working (SiteGround)

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

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by petekuhn on Tuesday, 30 May 2017 18:49 CDT

Friday, 19 May 2017 20:14 CDT

petekuhn
 I had a problem cloning a test site using Akeeba Backup and kickstart, which I've done countless times in the past. Both original and cloned sites are on SiteGround (the cloned site is a subdomain of the original). I kept getting 500 errors tyring to run kickstart.php (renamed to start.php).

Here is what SiteGround support said:

I am glad to inform you that I was able to find the cause of the problem and now start.php is accessible. There was a directive in the .htaccess file inside the public_html, which was not recognised by Apache. It affected the subdomain, because the .htaccess file works recursively for all subdirectories. To resolve the issue I had to exclude the following from the file:



Code:

<IfModule mod_mime.c>



AddCharset utf-8 .atom \



.bbaw \



.css \



.geojson \



.js \



.json \



.jsonld \



.rdf \



.rss \



.topojson \



.vtt \



.webapp \



.xloc \



.xml



</IfModule>



This did fix the problem. I just uploaded AdminTools 4.2.0 onto a test site, and I noticed that it is generating this code (or maybe I am setting something up incorrectly).

TIA.

Friday, 19 May 2017 20:20 CDT

petekuhn
Using .htaccess Maker in Admin Tools, in case it wasn't clear.

Monday, 22 May 2017 00:01 CDT

nicholas
The IfModule block surrounding it is there to prevent this from happening. It literally means "Ignore everything inside the IfModule unless the Apache module mod_mime is installed". You can just disable the "Set the UTF-8 character set as the default" option in the .htaccess Maker page and regenerate the .htaccess file.

Please note that this feature was implemented a year ago in Admin Tools 3.6.0. It's not something new. I don't buy it that it's causing trouble "all of a sudden" because:
  • It's there for a year. If it was causing problems on SiteGround, one of the largest Joomla hosts, you wouldn't be the only one reporting it.
  • It's enabled by default. Again, see above.
  • We are using it on our own site, also hosted on SiteGround. If it was causing problems we wouldn't be having this conversation on the SiteGround-hosted site where this feature is enabled.


Please ask them to check if they have accidentally regressed the Apache version on your site's server to something ancient OR if they have screwed something up and somehow killed the IfModule functionality on their modified Apache installation. If you cannot get through the line agents ask for a supervisor. It looks like a simple case of an untrained agent giving a bad reply.

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, 30 May 2017 18:49 CDT

petekuhn
Thanks Nicholas.

Your take is worth infinitely more than a random support dude's. And this guy was a lot more knowledgeable than the first person I talked with, who told me the backup file was corrupted (!!).

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