Support

This morning I tried to make a copy of one of my sites to a test subdomain, in order to test some changes before putting them on the live site. At first I tried to do this using the site transfer wizard. However it failed two times: the first time I got a message about an Ajax error, the second time this message did not occur but another message popped up while restoring the site on the test location. The second message was about a database error. Unfortunately I could not read the details as the pop-up window in which it appeared, disappeared after a few seconds.

Then I made a backup with the default backup profile and copied it to the test location using ftp (I 'cleaned' all files from the test location before doing this and checked to see if the database was still empty - it had no tables). Using kickstart I tried to restore this backup on the test location. It failed two times, both times I got the same message about a database error like I had when using the site transfer wizard for the second time. After two attempts using kickstart I gave up.

In addition to this experience, I need to tell you that I had many issues with the site transfer wizard over the last weeks. About 4 out of 5 attempts to use this wizard fail, with different types of error messages. This is remarkable because I used to use it quite a lot without any problems. Most of the time I'm working on a vps which has not changed during that period of time.

I hope you can help me solve this.


Kind regards,
Frits

Additional info:

After submitting this ticket I turned to working on an other site which is Joomla 3.2.0 and on the same vps. I used kickstart in order to make a copy and it returned the same database error. On this site it seems that I have an Akeeba core install instead of pro, I've made a separate ticket for that.

Then I decided to try restoring this J.3.2.0 site on my local MAMP installation. At first it seemed that the restore went ok, until I tried to login onto the admin panels. I cannot login using the same details as I use to login onto the original of this site.

My MAMP server has PHP Version 5.3.6 and MySQL 5.5.9.

These problems are becoming a bit urgent for me right now, as I do not want to do development on live sites. Also, I'm getting quite worried about my backups in general. If I were to restore for real emergency reasons right now, I'm afraid this restore would fail as well.

Kind regards, Frits

Frits,

Lets concentrate on the manual restore and let the wizard go for right now. We really need that database error, I think that is our main problem. The most common error is that the database credentials entered are not correct. Keep in mind that:

• The database connection information that shows up as default in the restore script is from your live site, you need to enter the new information for your subdomain site.
• Many host control panels, like cPanel, will prefix your database and user name with your host user name, so what you need to enter is not what you set up
• Passwords should only include "normal" characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), accented characters, etc. are infamous for messing up database passwords.

Those are my best guesses without knowing the actual database error.

On your MAMP setup, are you using the Admin user? We have had several instances lately where the browser has inserted a password into the Change admin password field during the restore. You have to scroll down to see that field, so you would not notice unless you are looking for that.

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your reply.

In order to answer some of your questions I thought I'd run the restore procedure again on my test subdomains, and it runs without a problem now! Both on the J.2.5.16 site and on the J.3.2.0 site.

So it seems that there was some kind of hiccup on my server this morning. I cannot think of any other explanation. I'll contact my hosting provider about this.

The login issue on the local MAMP server was not solved by running the restore again. But this issue is not very important to me as I prefer to do my development online so the customer can review them. Maybe I'll create a new backup in order to test if the issue still is there, but I don't have the time to do that right now.

Then finally there is the transfer wizard. I did not test it again yet. Also, this issue has been there for a few weeks now, unlike the database error. If you have any suggestions about how to tackle this one I'd be happy to hear them.


Kind regards,

Frits

Frits,

I don't have enough information to give you any advice on the problem with the transfer wizard. If you can get me the backup log for a failed attempt, that would be a good start. The log you posted looks like a successful back end backup from today. The database error that we are getting from the manual restore would stop the wizard as well.