Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Sunday, 09 September 2012 07:43 CDT

user68172

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: 2.5.6
PHP version: 5.4.4
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: localhost
Akeeba Backup version: 3.6.3

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:

Edited by user68172 on 2012-09-09 07:51 CDT

Sunday, 09 September 2012 07:46 CDT

user68172

I'm trying Joomla with a local installation and sample data for learning purposes. And I am using Windows 7 and XAMPP (1.8.0). A pretty straightforward environment, I would have thought.

I've looked at the trouble shooting guide and everything seems to be in order, and yet my site fails to backup. By adjusting the configuration settings, I make more or less progress and, maddeningly, I actually succeeded a couple times. Of course, when it worked, I snapshot the settings, thinking I had the answer, but no, the problem arose again, and again, and again...

Here is the constantly recurring error message:

Could not open archive file 'C:/xampp/htdocs/Joomla_2.5.6-Stable-Full_Package/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup/site-localhost-20120909-103634.j01' for append!

And I have attached a zip debug log, which contains the following entries in red:

[120909 12:36:52] Could not open archive file '<root>/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup/site-localhost-20120909-103634.j01' for append!

[120909 12:36:52] Failed Smart algorithm on AECoreDomainPack

Sunday, 09 September 2012 07:50 CDT

nicholas

You are experiencing a very rare case where Windows is running out of system resources. The best approach is try installing more RAM (especially if you have 2Gb or less), close all running applications (including everything running as tray icons), do a virus scan and try uninstalling or at least stopping all unnecessary services running on your PC. On top of that, you should try these configuration settings in Akeeba Backup:
- Minimum execution time: 5 seconds
- Maximum execution time: 3 seconds
- Runtime bias: 50%

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!

Sunday, 09 September 2012 07:51 CDT

nicholas

PS: Windows is hardly a "straightforward" environment, by any stretch of imagination. The most peculiar problems I've seen are all happening on Windows. Ever since I switched over to a Mac I stopped having nerve-breaking issues with my local development environment ;)

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!

Sunday, 09 September 2012 12:18 CDT

user68172

Sure, I expressed myself in a lazy fashion. I know Windows can be a jungle compared to Linux, for example, which I'm currently exploring (Ubuntu) via ToolBox. But that is for the future. By straightforward environment I was referring to the fact that I'm on a localhost instead of using a live server. Anyway, it surprises me that on my new PC (8G RAM, CORE i7, SSD 250G - normally very fast! (Yes, I would have preferred a Mac, but that would have cost me an extra grand, though with hindsight...) ) that I run out of resources. Still, I closed all running applications (normally not many), was not sure how to stop all unnecessary services running on my machine except for Avast!, and then plugged in the configuration settings as you suggested. It took a while, and my heart paid the price, but it finally worked! I trust it shall continue to do so when the time comes for me to backup and migrate the site when developed.
Thanks very much for your help! It's nice to know that even professionals have nerve-breaking issues with computers. Cheers!

Sunday, 09 September 2012 15:22 CDT

nicholas

There is an old article on Windows system resources and a slightly more recent one which explain what they are and why they run out. In short, if you have services and applications with resource leaks and haven't rebooted in a while, you'll run out of resources and the backup file will not be writeable as Windows can't allocate a file handle resource. Why closing applications works? The second article sheds some light to it:

Under this NT based memory management system, resources are not limited. As long as you have enough physical memory (RAM) or virtual memory (disk space) your applications will not run out of resources. The Windows NT memory system allocates resources dynamically. As long as the memory is available, your application can have it.

Even better, each application gets its own virtual copy of the operating system. That means that, applications are isolated and, if an error occurs, system memory is not corrupted. When an application terminates, all the memory allocated to it is released back to the operating system. That means that resource, or memory leakage is also nearly nonexistent. It is possible for an application to continuously demand more and more memory and the system will give it, until memory becomes short, but closing the application releases all that memory without the need to reboot the machine.

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!

Monday, 10 September 2012 03:45 CDT

user68172

I'll check it out. Truly much appreciated! Cheers!

Monday, 10 September 2012 04:51 CDT

nicholas

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!

Thursday, 13 September 2012 04:06 CDT

user68172

I've developed my Joomla site to a large extent and have tried to back it up just to be sure. Well, no go, same problem. Although it was not necessary the first time with the new configuration settings you recommended, it seems I'm going to have to stop unnecessary window services during backup if I want to maintain my sanity. Problem: I've looked at the list and there are so many that I have limited knowledge about. Is there a guide or list that will point me to the main system services that I can at least temporarily disable but which of course will not compromise the backing-up process?
Cheers!

Thursday, 13 September 2012 04:20 CDT

nicholas

I have yet to find a good list of which services can be safely disabled. I used to do some trial and error, leaving enabled what sounded important. Yeah, I know, it's not very scientific and I think that I may have screwed up Windows more than once because of that kind of shotgun debugging. Maybe you should try doing a reboot, shutting down (not disable, just shut them down for the rest of session) as many services as you can, quit all applications (including pesky tray icons) and take a backup. After a few tries you'll make it. Then take this backup and restore it on a different computer with a much cleaner Windows installation.

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, 13 September 2012 04:31 CDT

user68172

Windows is becoming a swear word in my personal lexicon. So be it. Once I'm sufficiently familiar with Linux via my Toolbox excursions, I'm going to simply change OS. Enough is enough. Thanks again. I kind of expected that there would be no plug-in solution, that trial and error would be necessary. That's life. Cheers!

Thursday, 13 September 2012 04:56 CDT

nicholas

This reminds me of myself six years ago :) After Windows made it impossible for me to do meaningful web development I used an old machine as a Linux server, hosting the code and web server, and used my Windows laptop only to run the browser and my IDE. Then I moved to Linux as my primary desktop OS. That was a good call unless I wanted to, say, organise my photos in a decent way. So I just migrated to Mac OS X. Two years later I have retrieved my sanity, increased my productivity and fully understand the seemingly absurd "once Mac you never go back" mantra of Apple fanboys. If you have the money, go for a Mac. If you don't have it, or don't care much about beautiful interfaces, go for Linux. If you go for Linux take my advice and use Xfce as your window manager. If you're going to use Ubuntu, try using XUbuntu from the start. It's much easier to use than the abysmal Unity or GNOME 3 interfaces.

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, 13 September 2012 07:34 CDT

user68172

Well, it worked, and of course for the demands of the immediate future I snapshot the pages showing the services I disabled. Thanks. And thanks too for the advice about OSs. I consider experience, particularly of the painful variety, like gold in this field. It has been chiseled in granite. Cheers!

Thursday, 13 September 2012 07:57 CDT

nicholas

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!

Saturday, 13 October 2012 18:00 CDT

System Task

system

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