Support

We are consistently running into failure notices on every attempt (multiple sites) to do an internal upgrade for Akeeba WP 2.3.2 to 2.3.3. Consistent failure on every site on which we have attempted this upgrade.

Screenshot of JSON Parse error notification attached.

Switching over to a manual upgrade (deactivate, delete, re-upload, reinstall, reactivate) severs the connection to previous backups made to the home server (we backup both to the host server so that our clients have access to backup files, and then, alternatively, to our own server in the cloud for emergency restores if the server fails.

Thank you.

This is a known issue with some upgrades. You can avoid losing the records in Manage Backups with the following instructions:

Please install the new version manually: download the new version's ZIP file, extract it and then upload the contents of the extracted akeebabackupwp folder into your site's wp-content/plugins/akeebabackupwp folder.

Why does this happen? The new version includes an update to the restore.php file used to install the update itself. However, this means that during the update the restore.php file is overwritten with the new version. Depending on the speed of your server it's possible that at this point the update is not done and requires one or more further steps. Since the new version of restore.php is incompatible with the old one it will cause the update to report an error. That's why you need to install the new version manually if you do see such an error. Unfortunately we had to provide a new version of restore.php for security reasons, even though that might break the update experience, as we explained in the News section of our site.

You can use the "Import" function on the Manage backups screen to import the existing backups for the sites where they were lost.

Thank, these are helpful instructions.

One point - when I use FTP to overwrite the contents of the akeebabackupwp folder with the newer version of Akeeba, this also overwrites the default folder where Akeeba stores its .jpa backup files by default - so using the "Import" fuction on the Manage backup screen to import existing backups for the sites - there are no such files.

Perhaps the contents should be merged rather than overwritten?

Otherwise I would assume one must move the files to a different location on the server prior to overwriting the plugin files.

Wow, it has been a LONG time since I saw that problem and then it was extracting a zip file. I don't think I've ever seen it with an FTP upload. Yes, we want to merge, not overwrite. Except that we want to overwrite existing files. Your server is overwriting the folders too. That's not normal and you're going to have to be careful of what any support person tells you because we just wouldn't anticipate that. I'm sorry for the problem.

This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.