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Hello Ken,

I would like to see the log file. Without it it's impossible for me to respond within any degree of accuracy.

There seems to be no issue with Akeeba Backup. All I see is that 30 minutes into the backup... nothing happens. This is a network error (it could be as simple as the Internet connection dropping for a couple of seconds), the computer went to sleep or the host is applying a CPU usage limit. If I were to guess, I'd first start with the computer going to sleep, then with a network error.

While the backup is running Joomla! will not time out. This happens because the backup rns in multiple steps. Each step happens on a separate AJAX request which is essentially a non-HTML page load. These steps happen several times every minute – this happens whenever you see the "Last server response" timer go back to zero. Yes, the page doesn't reload completely, but for all intents and purposes each of those requests resets the Joomla! timeout timer. We do that in order to avoid server time outs. A backup of a large site may take several minutes whereas PHP terminates requests with a timeout error in 10 to 60 seconds (it depends on the server, but this is what 90% of web servers is configured with). The splitting of the backup in steps allows us to run a very long process without hitting those timeout limits.

There is also the flip side to this. In order for this multi-step approach to work we need an external "mediator" which will send the request for each step, observe the reply and repeat this process until the backup is done (or fails). In the case of a back-end backup this "mediator" is a very small and simple Javascript programme running on the browser. Due to several technical limitations we cannot resume the backup if the process is interrupted because of an external cause such as a network issue or the machine on which the browser is running going to sleep. In those cases even though the last backup step completes fine on the server, the browser reports an AJAX loading error (it can't read the server's response), therefore terminating the backup.

This is what I believe that happens. Your computer goes to sleep in 30 minutes. You'll see from the log that the backup duration is 30 minutes plus a few seconds. Those few seconds is the last backup step still running on the server. When it finishes there's no longer a browser listening. One hour later you woke up your computer. The browser figured out that it's been forever since it last heard from the server and throws an AJAX loading error. You get perceive the backup as failed. I would recommend changing your computer's power settings and have it not go into stand-by / sleep / hibernation for at least 3 hours. Not that the backup is likely to take that much time, but you'd better be safe than sorry.