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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#22454 Corrupt backup file

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Akeeba Backup version
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Latest post by tampe125 on Thursday, 16 April 2015 10:05 CDT

csdesignstudios
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:

The backup zip file is corrupted every time we downloaded the file. We downloaded the file using filezilla and used binary mode. The issue is the file is still corrupted. Some of the backups we have for our other sites that we are using the product on , the zip file is fine and it allows to be extracted.
How do we solve the issue to make sure all the backups are usable. One of our sites went down and we went to restore it with akeeba and found out that the file was corrupt and we couldn't use it. So my question is how do go about to make sure all our backups for all our sites which we have 25+ are not corrupt.

* side note ( in the back end of akeeba when you click on manage backups it says ok for the latest backup). And we know that we have to download it from filezilla using binary file transfer but it still was corrupt. We read all documentation and that it is recommend to test the backup file once the site is backed up.)

Please guide us on how to make sure our backups are not corrupted for next time.

Thanks in advance

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Hello Wyatt,

what's the installed Akeeba Backup version?
What's the filename you are getting the extraction error?
Did you run ALICE and applied the suggested solutions?
I suspect you have one or more log files inside your backup: log files can change size while they are being backup up and that can corrupt your backup.

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!

csdesignstudios
We are have akeeba version 4.2 and the file name is site-www.drderickson.com-20150411-083030.zip

Yes i ran alice and everything checked out ok except for a file that is said to exclude or delete but the file is not there.

So my question is how do we get it to not being corrupted? are there any solutions as to how to know or to stop it from being corrupted?

Like I said some of our sites backup archive are not corrupted and some are!

csdesignstudios
When we download it in binary and go to use winzip to extract onto my desktop it shows a warning that some information maybe corrupted.

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
the file name is site-www.drderickson.com-20150411-083030.zip
I mean, during the extraction, Kickstart is displaying the file is currently working. What's the exact error you are receiving?

Yes i ran alice and everything checked out ok except for a file that is said to exclude or delete but the file is not there.
What's the name of that 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!

csdesignstudios
We didn't restore with kickstart because our whole site was down.

We tried to extract our files from the zip file and put them on our desktop and upload them through ftp. That failed because it said the some files might be corrupted.


After we got our site working through our own efforts we went in to manage backups and clicked on restore and that actually gave us an error saying that the archive was corrupt so it couldn't be restored.

This is what alice says for the command line troubleshooter test. Large files issues Error
The following files are too big and can cause backup issues:
File: /timelapsevideo.zip 36.34 Mb
Please try excluding these files using the Files and Directories Exclusion feature or delete them if you are sure you don't need them on your site.

Now when i go into the exclusion part of akeeba there is not a file with that name nor is it in our file structure for this site.

Thanks

csdesignstudios
What do you consider the root directory? for the file that alice is saying is to big and that it needs to be excluded?

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
This is the situation: your archive is corrupted and there is a good 99% that you won't be able to recover your data (that's why we tell you that you have to test your backups, not only take them).

However, you simply tried to extract it using a zip program, not our software, which is slighter more resilient to errors.
Please download Akeeba eXtract and try to extract it.
If you get a failure, please write down the name of the file where the extraction stops and try using Kickstart.
You'll have to use a remote server or setup a local server on your computer.

This might work, but it's a very long shot.
Finally, you have to avoid that such situation will happen again: remember the file name I told you to note? You'll have to exclude it from the next backups.

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!

csdesignstudios
So the extract work with that extraction tool you gave me. I got zero errors. Im going to do a test and see how it works out with using that and restore one of our sites. Ill let you know how it goes. Thanks

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
Ok let me know how it goes.

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!

csdesignstudios
Hi

I no this is off topic then what we are talking about. But does the lastest version of akeeba come with password protection like this url says it does

https://www.akeebabackup.com/videos/1207-video-tutorials/admin-tools-course-with-brian-teeman/1548-at007-password-protection.html

Thanks

dlb
The secret url function was removed in version 3.5.0 but was reintroduced in 3.5.1 as an unsupported feature due to great popular demand. If it works for you, great. If not, we no longer provide support for that feature.


Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist


us.gifEnglish: native


Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!


????
My time zone is EST (UTC -5) (click here to see my current time in Philadelphia, PA)

csdesignstudios
Today Test
So the restore process went good from exaction of files all the way to re upload and restoring the site.

so now my question is on the site that we tested the restore process we just restored back to normal and alice had zero errors and when i extracted the files with the wizard zero errors as well.
Yesterdays test
Yesterday we didn't use the wizard to extract the files. I used the wizard on the website that we needed to restore yesterday and it extracted without errors but yesterday it was giving errors that it was corrupted using winZip.

Was my file really corrupted or was it just not extracted properly?

Alice give the warning of file to large to exclude it. will that definitely give a corrupted backup?

if I don't excluded it. Alice gives a relative path for that file but it is not there. I dont have any file in the file structure to what she says the file is. Where would I find that file the path that it says it is
/filename.mp3?

How do i solve this warning or do i disregard it?

does alice warnings have to be cleared out to ensure not a corrupted backup?


tampe125
Akeeba Staff
What you experienced is a "false" problem: ZIP archives requires to create a checksum for every file added to the archive. In order to avoid memory errors, if a file is larger than 1Mb we are creating a dummy checksum value.
If you try to extract your archive with a WinZIP program, you'll get the "archive corrupted" warning since the dummy signature does not match the real contents of the file.
That's why you should always use Kickstart to extract your backups.

Moreover, I'd suggest you to use JPA archives, since they have the same features of the ZIP ones, but with a smaller size.

Regarding ALICE, you can ignore such file, that's not the cause of your problems.

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!

csdesignstudios
OK Thanks

tampe125
Akeeba Staff
You're welcome!

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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