Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Wednesday, 28 March 2012 21:31 CDT

user60557

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: 2.5
PHP version: (unknown)
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: 1and1.com
Akeeba Backup version: 3.4.3 Pro

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach a ZIP file containing your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue. If the file is over 2Mb, please upload it on your server and post a link to it.

Description of my issue: Tried to backup and got the following error:
Couldn't write to the archive file; check the output directory permissions and make sure you have enough disk space available.[len=589164 / 1035049]
The directory in question is set to 777 permissions and I have plenty of online space.

When I try to run Configuration Wizard I get the following error code:
Akeeba Backup could not find find a writable output and temporary directory. Please give write permissions to the administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup directory and run this wizard again.

Here is my backup log file.

Edited by user60557 on 2012-03-28 21:33 CDT

Thursday, 29 March 2012 03:15 CDT

nicholas

Wayne,

did you check the "make sure you have enough disk space available" part? All I see here is that you ran out of free disk space.

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!

Thursday, 29 March 2012 07:33 CDT

user60557

Mornin' Nicholas,

I have over 50% free space and over 50% file capacity. As I demonstrated, Configuration Wizard reports that it does not have access to the backup directory. Yet FileZilla reports the directory with 7's across the board.

And of course I cannot access my host server's back end to give a better report on disk space and file allocation. Their back end system reports it is down for maintenance. I know it was under 50% last evening when I sent this posting as I checked it first. My hosting package has unlimited space.

I'm trying to get AT back to the point where we were before you went on your little jaunt to France. I upgraded Joomla to 2.5.3 and got an updated template. And of course my template gave me fits. I'm to the point where everything is back to normal, except for creating a back up. :-) Then I'll work on AT.

Cordially,
Wayne

Thursday, 29 March 2012 08:47 CDT

nicholas

Hello Wayne,

I'd be a little more cautious with what "unlimited" means. In quite a few occasions I had people with "unlimited" disk space plans who had the same issue. It turned out that "ulimited" really meant for their host "we'll give you 1Gb when signing up, then if you ask us nicely and explain to us in detail why you need more space, we'll give one more Gb; and you have to repeat this process for each Gb of space you need". That's why when I read "unlimited disk space" in a host's description I cringe, start sweating, turn green and start puking ;) A few months ago, I had an unlucky guy whose control panel reported having used 10% of his 10Gb allocated space. Guess what? The host actually gave him 1gb of space! He had to file a support request to get the second Gb on his plan. It took us a week to figure that out and only after telling him three or four times to contact his host.

I'll tell you exactly how I came to the conclusion that you are running out of disk space (besides seeing the first signs in your log file). Your output directory has 0777 permissions, ergo it's writable. In fact, I can tell that much by looking at the log. Midway through the backup, the server says "hey, you can't write no more data to this file!". This means exactly one of the following two things:
1. Your host has applied a per-file maximum size; or
2. You have run out of free disk space
If the problem were #1, running Configuration Wizard would fix that. However, when try to run Configuration Wizard, as soon as you reach the area where it would determine the part size it fails. This means that we can't even write 128Kb of data. This means that most definitely you have run out of free disk space, despite what your host's control panel says.

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!

Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:00 CDT

user60557

Oh, just stinking great! Now how do I explain this to my hosting company who uses non-English speaking (natively) for their tech support.

I finally got into my hosting server's back end.

Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:05 CDT

nicholas

Hm... They do seem like they limit the disk space to 40Gb, don't they? In any case, can you try removing some of the "junk" from your site, just like I said a few posts above? Then, in order to figure out if it's a disk space issue or something else, you can try performing a database only backup. If that works and a full site backup fails you can exercise your English tutoring skills to non-English tech support techs.

PS: Actually, the ethnicity of the support techs really means nothing. It's all about how proficient they are in English. For instance, I am Greek and I still live in Greece. But with the thousands of messages I reply to in English every week, well, let's just say I'm currently more fluent in English than in Greek :D

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!

Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:23 CDT

user60557

Dear Professor,

I think you may be correct. When I upgraded my site to J2.5.3, from 1.5.2, the routine made a backup of my old site. I'm in the process of deleting the online files. I have a local backup. After that is accomplished I will try to run Akeeba Backup once again.

If that is successful I'll report back. Furthermore, upon a successful conclusion of a backup I'm going to get on the horn, hopefully to a 2nd Tier individual, and give them what's for. 'Tis a sunny day and I feel like reaming someone's posterior regions. :-)

Hopefully I don't get stuck when setting up Akeeba Admin Tools Pro like the previous attempt. I have found that the JUpgrade package has some problems. I had a clean system with no extensions other than what came with J1.5, but still had some hurdles to overcome. It is my express hope that everything goes smoothly.

Cheers and on to the next windmill!

Yeah, I agree with your comment about English as a native tongue. You are most assuredly an exception to the rule. :-) And for that I'm deeply appreciative. Most of the technical support I have been in contact with over the years, explicitly the 1st Tier folks, are little more than button pushers. It has been my experience that I often know more about their product than do they. Recently a 1st Tier individual was supposed to reset my server as there was a small problem. After me hacking at it for 12 hours I found out, much to my chagrin, he did not.

You want to get real fluent in English hang around me for a spell. Pretty soon you'd be able to move into the hills of Tennessee and become fluent in Hillbilly taulk. :-) And that is countered with the obverse of my dealing on a daily basis with manuscripts and documents of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. By osmosis I more often than not revert to their styling in writing. :-) You should see some of the articles I have penned. LOL

P.S. I was able to get my server all the way down to 28.8 GB from 39.75 GB by deleting my old install. Let's try it now.

Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:29 CDT

nicholas

It's probably a very good idea to try excluding your huge PDF files from the test backup – unless you enjoy spending a sunny day watching the progress bar fill up s-l-o-w-l-y ;) Moreover, I suspect that virtually all of those 29Gb are the PDF files. No point backing them up if what you actually need is an insurance policy against... um... collateral damage during the installation of Admin Tools or while running jUpgrade.

Hm, you have an interesting contrast there. Hillbilly and 19th century manuscripts! I'll never complain again about the difficulty of switching between English and Greek every day ;)

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!

Thursday, 29 March 2012 09:47 CDT

user60557

Oh Exalted Professor,

"Tis time to contact 1and1.com and, as Chaucer pragmatically might have said if he were alive today, "'Tis far past time to ream someone's nether ye regions."

Everything went smooth as silk with my backup. Now I need to figure just how to automate the moving of the files from my hosting server to my local drive via FTP. Hopefully I can get to run in the wee hours of the morning. Is there a way to get it delete the online file(s) after successfully copying them to my local drive?

Your comment about PDF files is astute. On this particular site there are only a small handful of PDFs and they are all extremely small, under 10 MB or so. The best I could do is to exclude the PNG images of the individual almanacs, annuals, etc. They are of course on my local server and mirrored with archival DVDs in the process of being created.

If I can figure out how to do so, and I'm horrible at this sort of thing, I should create profiles whereby once a month I do a complete backup and weekly everything for the exception of my excluded directories. I would exclude the non-applicable image directory components. A "move and delete" routine would be part of it. Am I correct in my assumption and do you have an easy tutorial I can follow Oh Exalted One?

Cheers and thanks for the help! The subscription was worth it.

Thursday, 29 March 2012 11:09 CDT

nicholas

Hello Wayne,

Heh, it was the disk space after all ;)

OK, moving the files from your site to your local PC is not an easy task. It can be automated, using Akeeba Remote CLI, but this is a command-line tool geared towards the more technically inclined. Granted, I have instructions to set it up even on Windows, but I still consider it a little over the head of the average user. It would be much (and I mean, much) easier moving the backups to an external cloud storage, e.g. Amazon S3. The other way to transfer the backup files locally is creating a script which connects to your site by FTP, downloads the backups and deletes them. However, I seriously consider that method to be way over the head of everyone except hardcore geeks and professional system administrators. If you absolutely want everything sitting in your local hard disk, you'll have to go through the pains of setting up Remote CLI.

Ah, I thought that you had everything in PDFs. OK, substitute PDF with PNG in my previous reply :) Yes, you should exclude them from the backup. There is no point backing up 30Gb of image files you already have on your hard disk, on DVDs and probably on several media and multiple copies.

In your case, I'd recommend having one profile, a full site backup which excludes the PNGs and PDFs you have in your local copies. As for the frequency it depends on one thing: how much work are you willing to lose if disaster strikes? One week seems an awful lot to me. I'd go for daily backups, especially if they are automated and stored in external storage. I'd recommend taking a look in all of the sections of our "Automating your backups" chapter for the proper way to automate your backup. Really worth the time spent to read it :)

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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