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Latest post by nicholas on Saturday, 29 October 2022 06:27 CDT
I'm wrestling with issues of frequently getting locked out as I try (vainly??) to get Joomla 4 working correctly on my website.
In the documentation is information about how to use rescue mode. However, I can't find any information about where to obtain or activate this mode. The documentation is less than helpful in this regard. Where do I find it?
Thanks for your help here.
Fran
First of all, let's make sure we are talking about the same documentation you should be reading for what you are describing: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/admin-tools-joomla/atwafissues.html
The documentation tells you there are two ways you can regain access. Either rescue mode, or renaming a file. The former tells you how to access Rescue Mode. Please note that Rescue Mode will only work if you are accessing the special URL from an IP address which is blocked and use the exact email address spelling you have in your user account, including lowercase and capital letters. Moreover, it requires that email is set up correctly and enabled on your site. About one in five users gets one of the three requirements wrong, that's why we have the alternative for renaming a file.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that you can run Joomla 4 successfully on any kind of site. I have been using Joomla 4 on my blog for 2 years, since it was still in beta. I have been using Joomla 4 on this site since April, the longer delay here having to do with the fact that I needed to first write a new subscriptions management system and redo our template. My wife has developed a very complex site (felidaefund.org) with Joomla 4 — most of what you see is just Joomla core with some template overrides and CSS — with development on it starting in the early Joomla 4 Release Candidate stages. Joomla 4 is a very solid CMS, much more so than Joomla 3. You can definitely do it. It's just a bit of relearning where some things are in the new admin template. In my experience, it will take you about 2–3 weeks before you are used to it and stop thinking about it. About the same it takes someone driving a stick-shift car to stop thinking about gear changes. It's, in fact, the same mental process in both cases.
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!
Nicholas,
Thanks for your long reply. I had tried the rescue mode once early in the process of being locked out. It didn't work and in my reading of the documentation which I've read extensively, it seemed to me there was something I needed to do to switch on this rescue mode. I couldn't find where to do that, hence my ticket for help.
I'm having a lot of trouble with trying to get extensions sorted. My latest trouble is getting the message: 0 Class 'JError' not found. And, then not being able to access the Global Configuration anymore. I haven't been able to find out what I should do about it. If you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it. I tried to switch on debug bug don't know if I succeeded. Then when I installed an extension from the web (Phoca Gallery) it produced another error: 404 Component not found. I don't know what I may have done wrong... but I obviously did something.
Thanks for your encouragement to stick with it and persevere. I've been about ready to give up. I like your wife's website! What template does she use?
Been a while since I drove a stick shift car... ;-)
Thanks again...
Blessings,
Fran
JError was deprecated since 2017 (Joomla 3.7). Joomla error handling relies on throwing Exceptions. Getting an error about this class missing means that one of your extensions has not gotten the memo the past 5 years. Turn on Debug Site in Global Configuration. It will print a debug trace. You will see which extension it comes from. My guess is the template or a system plugin which has not been updated in ages. Since you can't access the Global Configuration you can edit the configuration.php file and set public $debug = true (right now it should be reading false).
> Then when I installed an extension from the web (Phoca Gallery) it produced another error: 404 Component not found. I don't know what I may have done wrong... but I obviously did something.
Fix the first problem before trying to install anything new. If it's a plugin causing the problem it is very likely it messes up the installation, causing it to die before Joomla gets the chance to record the installed extensions in the #__extensions table. Either that, or you accidentally disabled the Phone Gallery component in the System, Manage, Extensions page.
> Thanks for your encouragement to stick with it and persevere.
I am an engineer (Mechanical Engineer, more specifically) by formal education. We are used to things being broken and looking desperate. Our job is to figure out why and then how to put the project back on track. A certain mix of negative (“thinks will inevitably be broken”) and positive (“we can figure things out if we think hard about it”) attitude comes with that profession.
In the end of the day, you can always take a backup, start uninstalling extensions to end up with a mostly bare site and work your way up from there. If you mess up, well, you are in a much better place than me when I was handling construction projects in Athens in the early 00s. You can at least restore from a backup ;)
> I've been about ready to give up.
Never give up. It's computers. You can always beat them into submission. You have backups, nothing is lost.
> I like your wife's website! What template does she use?
She builds her own templates from scratch. She has a process. She starts with wireframes, sets up the overrides with the markup and then works her way through the CSS. She goes “outwards in”, starting by styling the common display elements (header, footer, navigation etc) then one page at a time.
I am nowhere near as good as her with CSS. I started this site's template by creating a child template of Cassiopeia and working my way through each page's design using Bootstrap 5 classes and a little bit of custom CSS for colours and fonts. So, even a decidedly non-designer like me can make a custom template. It's a matter of willpower and, of course, whether it makes practical sense. If you have the time, after you get your site up and running, you can give it a go. Depending on the use case it may even make more sense than using a page builder component.
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!
Wow! Thanks, Nicholas.
Thankfully, I mostly understood it all. Unfortunately I'm unable to access the Global configuration to turn on the debug site. It always gives me the 'JError' message, and I can never get to Global Configuration. Is there a way to get around the problem? Is there a .php file I can rename in cPanel?
Since I've done the update yesterday I haven't had a chance to do a backup. It's been one lockout issue after another. I only have a full backup of the Joomla 3 installation (10GB).
Do you think if I take a sledge hammer to the computer I might succeed??? ;-)
Thanks,
Fran
Nicholas,
Further to my reply above...
I renamed the Phoca Gallery subdirectories and, voila, I am able to access Global Configuration and System. Woo-hoo!!! I don't know if something bad will happen as a result of the renaming but at least I can now access what I need to access.
I've turned on the debug and will leave it turned on until I get everything working properly.
Phoca Gallery is supposed to be Joomla 4 ready. I think I'll contact them to let them know of the problem. I utilised Phoca Gallery extensively in Joomla 3, and like it.
Blessings,
Fran
Delete the renamed subdirectories. Otherwise you'll forget about them and you will end up with cruft left behind on your site. In 2–3 years you'll be wondering why this cruft exists.
I have not used Phoca Gallery in a while but if I recall correctly when my wife tried using it about a year ago on Joomla 4 she had some issues. Then again, it's a long time ago so any issues back then don't necessarily mean anything today. Please do let Jan (Phoca's developer) know about your issues. He's a good guy who cares about his software and tries hard to make it work right.
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!
Dear Nicholas,
Thanks again for your response, and your suggestions.
I haven't yet made contact with Phoca Gallery about the issue. I do wonder if perhaps I should alert him to the problem with the 'JError'??? I had updated to the version for Joomla4 so am surprised there was a problem. I'll probably look for alternatives.
I am having some significant problems with Akeeba Backup. Maybe I should start another thread, and I need to document the problems I've been having which have resulted in my website becoming inaccessible due to running out of memory at my host. I'll leave that for tomorrow. I'm quite tired tonight.
Blessings,
Fran
Yeah, please do get in contact with Phoca.
About Akeeba Backup and your memory issues: ask your host if they are running CloudLinux on their servers. There is a known issue with how CloudLinux manages memory when there's a lot of disk I/O going on and we can work around it by making the backup slower.
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!
Thanks.
I will check with HostPapa. I'm unable access the System section of the backend so I may have a problem with a log. Does the following make any sense to you?
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24668040 bytes) in /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/vendor/maximebf/debugbar/src/DebugBar/DataFormatter/DataFormatter.php on line 41
RuntimeException: 'Headers already send (output started at /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/vendor/maximebf/debugbar/src/DebugBar/DataFormatter/DataFormatter.php:41' thrown in /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/joomlatools/library/dispatcher/response/transport/http.php on line 56
while handling exception
KExceptionError: 'Error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24668040 bytes)' thrown in /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/vendor/maximebf/debugbar/src/DebugBar/DataFormatter/DataFormatter.php on line 41
Stacktrace
#0 /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/joomlatools/library/exception/handler/abstract.php(382): KExceptionHandlerAbstract->_handleError(1, 'Error: Allowed ...', '/home/halbi695/...', 41, NULL, Object(Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\Error\OutOfMemoryError))
#1 /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/vendor/symfony/error-handler/ErrorHandler.php(607): KExceptionHandlerAbstract->_handleException(Object(Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\Error\OutOfMemoryError))
#2 /home/halbi695/public_html/libraries/vendor/symfony/error-handler/ErrorHandler.php(697): Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler->handleException(Object(Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\Error\OutOfMemoryError))
#3 [internal function]: Symfony\Component\ErrorHandler\ErrorHandler::handleFatalError()
#4 {main}
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24670208 bytes) in Unknown on line 0
I haven't yet tried to look at the php files mentioned.
Oops... another PS.
Just logged on and was able to access the System menu item. Maybe it cleared itself... wishful thinking...
Fran
Another oops...
While I could access the System menu when I clicked on the Template link I got the error messages again and now can't access anything. So, if you do have any insight or suggestion, I'm open to it.
Blessings,
Fran
Disable Debug Mode on your site. When you enable debug mode Joomla's database driver tries to log every database query in memory. This is what is causing the memory outage error.
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!
oh dear...
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Too much to learn and remember. This I did years ago when I first set up my website with Joomla... now it's re-learn mode...and the learning curve feels massive! I'm needing to document what I do and the solutions so I can, hopefully, fix things when I mess us.
Thanks for all your help.
I've written to HostPapa support re whether they use CloudLinux.
Blessings,
Fran
A quick update...
I heard back from HostPapa and they do use CloudLinux. Is the info for making the backup slower somewhere in the documentation?
Fran
Try turning off Site Debug first. If that doesn't help file a new support issue about the memory issue and we'll look at the log file before deciding the best approach. One step at a time is better than everything all at one ;)
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!
I've turned off debug. And, have read through the documentation. It doesn't answer a big question I have.
How do turn off backing up certain directories? I have 4 websites being hosted under the same plan. I only want to back up one of them. How do I do that? Can I do that? Their directories are located under public_html.
The sites I'd like to exclude are: bhojli (a static html site), hope (a WordPress site), palaungic (a static html site) and also a directory called old_files
Is it possible to exclude these? They really bloat the backup, especially hope which has an extensive photo gallery, and which I have stored on my computer.
If I read the documentation correctly then anything above public_html is not backed up. Is that correct? So, I wouldn't need to worry about any directory there, right?
I will now give a backup a try without debug and see if I make progress.
Blessings,
Fran
> How do turn off backing up certain directories?
As documented, with Files and Directories Exclusion. It's described as “Very often our sites have files or folders which don't really belong to the backup. [...] Akeeba Backup lets you exclude files and folders to solve these problems.”
> If I read the documentation correctly then anything above public_html is not backed up. Is that correct?
Correct. We only back up what is under your site's root. If your site's root is public_html then we only back up what's under it. What happens above it does not concern 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!
Though I carefully read through the configuration documentation I failed to get as far as finding the one you referenced. I will carefully check this, and look more carefully at all you've provided. Thanks for that.
I did a full backup this morning. It took almost 2 hours and included what I don't need. It also used up all my resources at HostPapa. (I think they'll be glad to see the back of me if I have to move on...)
I did have it do the 'All Information and Debug' log. It's 34MB in size!! I haven't attempted to look at it yet.
Thanks so much for taking the time to provide such good ad helpful advice. I have been going slightly crazy.
Blessings,
Fran
Set the log level to Errors and Warnings. The All Information And Debug is only necessary when you want us —or ALICE, the automated log analyser— to troubleshoot a backup which failed.
From experience, 34Mb is on the very heavy side. Normally these are between 4 and 8Mb on most sites. You either have several thousands of media files (images, videos, audio, PDF files, …) or you have kept copies of folders from previous versions of your site. The latter is quite common. I've worked on plenty of sites and I've seen administrator.old, administrator.old.old.old.old.1, I have seen ZIP files of old versions of the site weighing several Gb, I have even seen folders similar to old_site_2005, old_site_2006, …, old_site_<last year> at some point. Excluding this cruft typically reduced the backup sizes from way too many Gb to a few dozens to hundreds of Mb.
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!
Dear Nicholas,
Thanks so much for all your helpful advice. I feel as if I'm finally making progress with Joomla4. I don't like it yet. They've been pushing it hard for months now. I was getting an email every few hours to upgrade and ignored it for as long as I could stand it. To me it's not really ready to be unleashed on those of us who feel rather inadequate for the task. With your help I think I'm through the worst of it. There's a lot to do ahead, especially for extensions that have yet to be updated and which I used on my website in J3. I'm looking for alternatives. It is slow going, and will probably take me longer than 2 weeks to be feeling comfortable and satisfied with this new version. Your help has made it possible for me to keep moving forward and not give up in total despair... you were an answer to my prayer for help. So, thanks!
Blessings,
Fran
Joomla 4 had been ready to ship since beta 2 in 2020. It was kicked further back because Bootstrap 5 was about to be released so it made sense to include it instead of Bootstrap 4, even if it meant pushing the release back by 7 or so months.
Either way, extension developers had a lot of time to update their extensions — since 2017. Most chose to ignore the work they had to do. A lot of them had actually stopped working with Joomla years ago; they were just selling the same software they were no longer spending any time to maintain because it was easy money. As soon as they had to do something they started complaining. Well, tough. It's not like they were being constantly reminded to start working on Joomla 4 versions of their software since 2017 — oh, wait, that's actually what was happening in every alpha, beta, and release candidate version. So, what I am saying, is that if an extension is still NOT ported to Joomla 4 and does NOT have a clear, well-defined roadmap for releasing a Joomla 4 version it is already dead and you need to look for something else.
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!
Thanks for the history. And, you're right about many extension makers not putting in any effort ahead of time. I bought several extensions from one provider some years ago and have just found out that they have gone out of business BUT some of the extensions are still available at Github for free though only for Joomla 3 others can be paid for and I don't know if they work with J4. I'm currently thinking through what extensions I'll really need, and then whether I can afford their upgraded versions. I have subscriptions with you guys and Joomla Tools. I'm glad as it's been very nice have these two actually work once I figured out what I was doing wrong.
Thanks for the warning about any extension not already working for Joomla4. I'll avoid such.
I hope your weekend is going well. Enjoy your day of rest tomorrow.
Fran
Thank you! Have a great rest of your weekend :)
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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