Support

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 (lots ..!)
Joomla! version: 2.5.14 and 3.1.1
PHP version: 5.3.17
MySQL version: 5.5.30-cll
Host: Zen
Akeeba Backup version: 3.7.10 and 3.7.7

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:

I've been using Akeeba Backup with no problems at all for quite some time - and now, suddenly, all of my sites are simultaneously running into problems with it. It seems most likely that the issue is not with Akeeba, but I'm hoping you can help me isolate where the problem might be occuring - because I'm running out of places to look ...

First of all, backups are failing with a 'Backup Failed' message;

AJAX Loading Error
HTTP Status: 403 (Forbidden)
Internal status: error
XHR ReadyState: 4
Raw server response:
Forbidden

The backup seems to be failing either during the backing up of the files or immediately after that - there is some inconsistency regarding how quickly the 'Backup Failed' message takes to appear - but it's always been at that stage, as far as I can see.

Also, if I try re-running the Configuration Wizard, I get one of the following errors;

Configuration Wizard Failure

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.

(I've seen this on both Joomla 2.5.14 and 3.1.1 with Akeeba v3.7.10 and v3.7.7)

Or;

Configuration Wizard Failure

Could not save the minimum execution time preference. You will have to configure Akeeba Backup manually.

(I've seen this on Joomla 2.5.14 with Akeeba v3.7.7)

• I'm seeing these issues on every website I'm running (all Joomla - about 8 or 9 or them).
• The issues were first noticed in the last 3 or 4 days and were all working fine about a week prior to this.
• The sites are spread across two completely separate cPanel accounts - though both are hosted on the same physical server.
• I've spoken to the host (Zen) who weren't able to identify any changes or work that had been carried out over the last week - all appears to be fine, from what they can see.
• Permissions to the /administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup directories are all 755.
• memory_limit is set to 256M on most of my sites - with the others set to 128M
• I don't know how to tell if the PHP opendir function is available - please advise ..!
• I have installed a completely fresh installation of Joomla 2.5.14 - I was able to install Akeeba Backup, but the same issues described above are occuring (the configuration wizard fails, and the backup cannot complete - even if I duplicate the configuration settings from other previously working Joomla/Akeeba sites on the same server).
• I typically use Firefox - but the same issues occur on Chrome.

Thanks in advance for any help or pointers you can give me ... -_-

Hi there Nicholas,

Thanks for your quick response.

Yes, I share your concerns - and everything points to the fact that Akeeba is not at fault - but I was hoping that something in the logs might shed some light on what's broken.

I did make some adjustments to an .htaccess file over the weekend - and my first thought was that this was responsible for the issues. However, I reverted the changes and there was no difference. I resolved to look into everything more closely today - and it's only today that I see that Akeeba Backup on the sites running on my OTHER cPanel account (same server, different .htaccess files) are not working either. I have not made any adjustments to this second cPanel account for some time.

As I say, this has happened across 8 or 9 sites running across two separate cPanel accounts. One cPanel account (and it's associated files - .htaccess or otherwise) has not been touched by by me for months. I haven't run any broad updates across the sites - so there is no single update, security extension, .htaccess file or cPanel configuration parameter that could have affected all of the sites in this way.

To clarify - the sites themselves are seemingly working fine in every other respect. The only problem I'm able to duplicate is the fact that Akeeba Backup is not working anywhere (even on a completely fresh install) - and I can't, for the life of me, work out why.

I did speak to the Zen technicians before posting here as it seemed logical that a change must have been made to the server, but they couldn't see anything amiss. They asked if I could determine where Akeeba was failing in the hope we could get closer to locating the problem - but I couldn't make enough sense of the log myself ... so here I am, now, hoping that some of the symptoms I'm describing here might be familiar to you ... o_O

Oh, one more thing ...

Looking at my logs within cPanel, I'm seeing numerous variations of the following message whenever I access Akeeba Backup;

[Mon Aug 12 13:18:31 2013] [error] [client 0.0.0.0] File does not exist: /data01/ACCOUNT_NAME/public_html/SITE_DIRECTORY/media/com_akeeba/plugins, referer: http://www.SITE.com/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba

(I've substituted the IP address and identifiable account information)

If I browse my file structures (on any of the sites), I can see that there is no 'plugins' directory in that location - but it would seem that Akeeba is trying to access it. Is this significant ..? o_O

Okay, understood - thanks for the clarification.