Support

Hello Nadir,

Since you are using Windows hosting Admin Tools cannot help you. It can only work on Linux systems where there is a notion of permissions. Under Windows PHP does report fake permissions (which mean nothing) but you cannot modify them. Windows is using ACL privileges to manage access to directories.

The first thing I would try is using the manual installation procedure (see the installation troubleshooter, towards the end of the page). If this works, you have a problem with your temporary directory.

If this doesn't work, try following the instructions on the same troubleshooting page under "Enable FTP" and be very, very careful about which FTP Root you specify. If in doubt, follow my instructions regarding FileZilla; you can't go wrong with it. Then try a manual installation again. Don't try the install from package.

If this still give you an error, please post back.

Hm, two point I have to make.

First, why are you sending me a log file? If you have the Core version you shouldn't have the System Restore Points plugin which takes an automatic backup before a component upgrade, unless you have an ancient version. However, those ancient versions shouldn't even really be capable of installing on Joomla! 2.5.

Which brings me to point number two. Whenever in doubt, uninstall before you reinstall. If you don't want to lose your settings, or if you're not sure if the uninstallation really worked, you can follow the scenic route. Remove the following folders:
- administrator/components/com_akeeba EXCEPT the administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup directory and the administrator/components/com_akeeba/akeeba/serverkey.php file. If you remove that directory and that file you will lose your existing backups and/or settings.
- components/com_akeeba
- administrator/modules/mod_akadmin
- media/com_akeeba
- plugins/system/plg_srp
- plugins/system/plg_akeebaupdatecheck
- plugins/system/plg_aklazy
- plugins/system/plg_oneclickaction
Now you can re-install Akeeba Backup.

If even this doesn't help I will have to make the ticket private and ask you for connection information to your site.

The db tables are safe to leave alone. The installation SQL files check if each table exists before creating it.

OK, that's correct. The directories in my instructions try to encompass all possible Akeeba Backup versions which could run on Joomla! 2.5. It's natural that some of them are not there.

You have to talk to your host. I am 100% sure that PHP is unable to list the contents of the site's root directory. Each folder has Read, Write and Browse privileges under Windows (under slightly different names in each release). In your case the site's root has read (and probably write) privileges for the web user, but not browse privileges. You must ask your host to fix that. I can't fix it, you can't fix it. We are not Administrators on your host's server.

No other extension has the need to list the contents of the site's root directory, that's why. You will only see this issue with backup and file browser components. Other components work on a predefined set of files with known paths. Akeeba Backup has to make a list of all files and folders in your site so that it can back them up.

I think that their automated reply is:

1. unrelated to your issue
2. too generic
3. showing that they're using PHP in CGI mode
4. including a solution to a common problem which arises from their inability to configure the server properly

If that was my site I would run like hell and go to a proper host. But please do remember that I am picky and a geek. What I think is not always what you should think or do ;)

You chose the most difficult platform to deploy your first Joomla! site :) Windows Server is a great platform as long as you have full control of the server and Microsoft certification on managing such servers. Any other scenario and you're putting obstacles in your way for no apparent reason. Linux servers are much easier to use in a shared server / VPS or no dedicated IT team scenario.

Hello Nadir,

1. Some features are not expected to work at all under Windows, namely everything which has to do with permissions. Windows have no notion of permissions, they are using ACLs which can only be set up by Administrators of the Windows server machine.

If you are using IIS then the .htaccess Maker will also not work. Since IIS has poor support for URL rewriting all features hinging on URL rewrite (e.g. URL redirection, most options under Link & SEO Tools) will also not work properly.

2. Any Linux distro is as good as any other. Sane server setup is all it takes, but that's very well beyond the scope of our support forum. My personal bias is towards Ubuntu Server which is based on Debian. I guess that pretty much wraps it up. Yes, Debian is a good distro. Just make sure you follow best practices setting up your server.

I can give you some recommendations, but you should take a look at their offerings and your needs before committing to one of them.

Rochen has been around forever and is the only host to sport the official Joomla! host badge. I'm their customer and very happy with them. That said, they're a little pricey, some of their support personel (mostly the new guys out East) does give BS replies and they do suffer from intermittent but not too frequent routing issues (which I think have to do with their colocation provider). Definitely not recommended for shared hosting.

iRedHost is a very stable hosting provider, albeit expensive and geared towards geeks. You get Webmin as your control panel. No cPanel and fancy stuff. You have to know what you're doing and pay quite a lot.

CloudAccess.net, better known as the Joomla! Demo provider, is a very decent and speedy host. The downside is that they control panel is integrated in Joomla!'s administrator. If you can't log in to admin, you're screwed. They are fixing that, but I don't know their ETA. They have a strange pricing plan. The first site is about 20$ per month, each additional site another 5$ per month. It's very pricey if you only have one site, it's a good deal if you have over 4 sites.

SiteGround. That's honestly my personal favourite. Originally a so and so company, they made huge strides over the last couple of years. Right now they're the fastest host I've ever used and they have a very good security model (each shared hosting account runs in its own chroot environment). Oh, just to give you an idea: their stock shared hosting server was faster than my consumer grade machine with Core i7 2.3GHz, 16GB 1600MHz RAM and blazing fast SSD. Their stock shared server was about 50% faster than my machine. That's a normally loaded live server versus a zero load machine. My jaw dropped. The biggest bottleneck I had was that my 20MBps ADSL connection was too slow to catch up with their server :) Given their low price and huge space / bandwidth allowance it's a no brainer.

Ignore that, it's normal