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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#21377 Kickstart error in header file

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by tampe125 on Wednesday, 05 November 2014 10:30 CST

user85678
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:
Trying to transfer my server from letshost to godaddy

transferred the JPA file to the new site and run kickstart

get the header error Invalid header in archive file, part 0, offset 0

copied the JPA to test server local and it installed fine

go back to godaddy site and run troubleshooting with ftp, kicktemp,etc. Continue to get error.
There is no database on the site so created one
kickstart again same error on header Invalid header in archive file, part 0, offset 0

Anything else I can do to track the process?
thank you
Ian

PS No logs since kickstart

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Hello Ian,

did you try the suggested solutions of the troubleshooter?
If you still have the same problem, you can always extract the whole archive locally and then manually upload it using FTP.
It will take a while, but you'll be able to restore your site.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
Davide
yes as above I did

I dont suppose there is any logging capability in kickstart to see where it breaks?

thanks
Ian

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Is your backup a multipart one?
If so, can you please check if you transferred all the files (.jpa, .j01, .j02 etc etc)?

If you still get the error, usually this means that the archive contains invalid data.
Can you please try to download it using FTP? Sometimes browser extensions inject invalid data inside the downloaded file.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
No it is a Single Part JPA sent directly by FTP from server to server and also FTP Server to PC to Server

I am uploading by FTP as we speak

thanks
Ian

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Please let me know if manually uploading it from your PC changes the result.
If you still get the error you have to manually extract it locally using Akeeba eXtract, then upload all the files using FTP.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
Davide

I downloaded to my PC ., expanded with the Akeeba utility and ftpd to site as a work around

It would be great to have some other error codes in kick start to check

Thank you
Ian

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Kickstart returns an error, is the one you saw on screen.
Such error could be caused by several things.
You took the longest path: I asked you to simply download the archive using FTP and uploading it to the remote server, then run kickstart.
That would give us an hint if there was something weird during the connection between the two servers.
Instead of doing this, you downloaded it, extracted it, then uploaded all the files.
This is a solution, but we usually rely on that when nothing else is working, since it's very time consuming.

Anyway, I'm glad you restored your site and everything is working fine.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
Davide

OK, I am sorry I missed one of your instructions, as you saw in my original I downloaded the file from the server to to my test machine (From the original destination - not the source) using FTP . I then ran kickstart on my test machine and it opened so the original file was not corrupt.

Since I would like to get kickstart working, I will try again, I will create a clean kick start file on the server (source), FTP it to my PC, FTP it to the Destination, try kickstart again. I will use the JPA format and default settings.

Cheers
Ian

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Great, let me know if it works.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
Davide,

OK so I did exactly what you said, created the JPA file locally, downloaded to my PC, uploaded it to the new server loaded kickstart, ran it and again I get the header error. I am pretty confident I have disk space sufficient for the load.

Anything else I can do to diagnose?

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
These are the causes I can't think about:
  1. Kickstart itself. Make sure you have the same version in both cases and that the file size (in bytes) is the same.
  2. Transferring the backup archive itself. Using FTP is NOT enough. You MUST make sure it's set up to use the Binary transfer mode. Otherwise your FTP client may corrupt the archive on upload
  3. File and directory permissions. Maybe the file is there, Kickstart can't see it but the file permissions don't allow the file to be opened. The JPA file should have at least 0644 permissions. Some FTP servers and clients change the permissions of newly uploaded files to 0600 which makes it impossible for Kickstart to open them. It's not Kickstart's fault, the operating system of the server doesn't allow PHP to open the file, therefore Kickstart has no way to read it.

That's all the reasons I can think of it.

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

user85678
Davide

I am carrying out the same thoughts in line with your process so far -

Checked file sizes of JPA and kickstart they are identical

Kickstart version is 4.0.0

I did not upload with binary so have found out how to do that with filezilla and am reloading up to the server WIP

In the meantime set permissions for the JPA file to 777 to test and reloaded kickstart in debug mode. all above failed, will try again with new binary upload file.

While waiting I then moved the backup directory into the root and.....

IT WORKED

the folder the backup was in had permissions of 0755

I have adjusted that folder permission to 0777 and IT WORKED too

So I guess you can add that to your already great instructions..

If the file is in a folder check permissions on that too. test it by moving the JPA into Root

Thank you
Ian


tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Great! I'm glad you fixed the issue!

Davide Tampellini

Developer and Support Staff

🇮🇹Italian: native 🇬🇧English: good • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Rome (UTC +1)
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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