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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#11924 Restoring only a single table from full backup

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by on Saturday, 12 May 2012 18:00 CDT

avocom
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: (1.5.26)
PHP version: (5.3.10)
MySQL version: (5.1.61-cll)
Host: (Linux midphase)
Akeeba Backup version: (Pro 3.4.3)

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:

Hi,

This site uses ExtendedReg from JVitals which creates extra tables to add fields to the standard joomla xxx_users table. Among These new tables there is one called xxx_extendedreg_users.

We now need to retrieve the values of only one header (column) of this table which has had many, but not all, entries deleted by mistake.

I have followed this method (https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/unorthodox-emergency-restoration.html) and managed to restore the original tables to the database as jos_xxxxx. Note that I don't use jos_ as a prefix, so the website is still intact.
The problem is that the table jos_extendedreg_users nor the core table jos_users have been restored. phpMyAdmin reported no errors during the restoring process.

If this table had been restored, I was planning to deleted the jos_ tables I didn't want and merge the restored table with my current table (a backup of it of course).

This scenario brings me to 2 questions:

1. Is this the best and easiest way to retrieve the values of a backed up table to a current one?

2. Is my "full site backup" working well and backing up the whole site or just a few tables (I hope not!!)? If this is the case, what am I doing wrong?

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I believe you simply took a very liberal interpretation of the instructions :) Look at your database. You have a table named #__extendedreg_users (note the hash-double underscore in front). Now go back to the instructions on the page you linked to and read "Step 3. Editing your database backup". We pretty much tell you that all tables in the database dump are stored with a #__ prefix (this is a Joomla! best practice) and you have to change that before restoring with phpMyAdmin. I thought it was self-understood (if you read through the entire instructions) that where we say jos_ you can/should use your own database table prefix if you don't like/use jos_ and you should do that before restoring the files with phpMyAdmin.

FWIW, our restoration script does change the metaprefix (#__) into the real prefix (user-defined in the restoration script's interface) when restoring your site. It's only when doing a manual restoration that you need to change the prefix manually.

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!

avocom
Hi Nicholas and thanks for your prompt reply.

Yes, I have changed the prefix from #__ to jos_ exactly as described in the step 3. As a result I don't have any table with the prefix #__, but several with jos_ plus the original tables I had with other prefixes.

Now I wonder why the table jos_users and jos_extendedreg_users weren't created with the others.

One thing that is important to mention is that I want to retrieve a table from a backup made in March and not the latest April one. The Log file I sent you is the latest and the only I have. Looking into it I noticed it isn't incremental.

Another thing I can think of is that I used the latest Akeeba eXtract Wizard in Snow Leopard and not in Lion. If you think that might help to get the table I need, I can redo the process using Lion or even try an older backup file. All these backup files are full site backups and performed the same way.

Thanks

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I assume that you didn't try restoring all SQL dump files. All files named joomla.sql, joomla.s01, joomla.s02 and so on must be restored to have a complete restoration of your database.

Database backups are never incremental because it's currently impossible to create incremental SQL backups (it would take modifying your database tables to do that).

If you received no extraction errors, the extraction worked. There is no need to use Mac OS X Lion.

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!

avocom
Great Nicholas,

I knew I was doing something dumb and I was correct in that. Following the 'Unorthodox: the emergency restoration procedure' article I had only restored the joomla.sql file.

I have now restored some of the joomla.sNN files (only those with the info I needed) and my table was properly restored. I then run a query and my real table got its missing data.

Thanks a lot

PS. Could you please delete the log file from my first post and this PS line? Having all the log info in a public forum isn't a good idea. Thanks very much

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
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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