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Description of my issue:
Since the update on August 7 none of the Command-Line auto backups will run on any of our three sites, but they all ran perfectly before that. We host on a HostGator VPS and the sites are;
RemovingChains.org
ArkofHopeforChildren.org
UnChainedProject.org

I am able to manually run Back-end backups on all four sites without a problem.

My answers from someone else s ticket #23110 would be;
How are you triggering the backup?
* have always run the same cron job on all three sites every other day with zero errors for months now

Do you get an error or simply nothing happens?
* No no error message - nothing happens

After the backup start, can you find an entry inside the "Manage backups" page?
* No, there is no entry in the Manage Backup area as if any of the backups even attempted to run on ANY of our three sites.

I ran Alice and the only error it gave me (for all three sites) had to do with log file errors as notes below. However we have long ago had the log files being ignored plus the largest once is at .2 kb
That being said I can modify the cron job and see if something changes if someone will tell me exactly where to append the regular expression instruction it gives in the following (do I add it to the end with no spaces?);

Error log files
Error
Error log files are included inside archive backup:
administrator/components/com_joomlaupdate/error_log
components/com_avchat3/chat/m/error_log
components/com_community/error_log
You can exclude these files using the following regular expression: #(/php_error_cpanel\.|php_error_cpanel\.|/error_)log#

The command to exclude the log files would be entered under RegEx Files and Directories Exclusion. The command begins and ends with the # character in the example and the # is part of the regular expression.

Please check the contents of your cli folder to make sure akeeba-backup.php is actually in the folder. Something went "bump" on my last Hostgator update and the cli files were all missing. I had to do a manual install to fix it. (Do not uninstall the component, that will cause you to lose all your settings and possibly your stored backups.)

Thanks DLB,

akeeba-backup.php is actually in the CLI folder on each of the websites.

and now I understand how to add that file to the exclusions area. I didn't notice the little + sign and all before. So I added this t each site;
#(/php_error_cpanel\.|php_error_cpanel\.|/error_)log#

The next auto backups are set for the 19th of August. Should I wait to see if they work now?

I suspect that the regular expression fixed a problem that we didn't know we had yet. Those log files can corrupt the backup archive, in a worst case scenario making it impossible to extract. It is good to have it fixed, but I don't think that was causing the problem.

Please check the Schedule Information button and check your CRON command line against what is shown there for a CRON backup. That looks at your actual server and gives you the proper paths for the backup file.

Also, please check with Hostgator support to make sure your path to the PHP-CLI executable is correct. On my Hostgator shared server plan it is /opt/php54/bin/php. The "54" varies by PHP version. You may need to draw them a picture. You MUST have PHP-CLI, not PHP-CGI/FCGI. That can be a tough distinction for bottom rung support.

Hi Dale; That suggestion found the problem with one of our sites acting as the test to see if auto Command Line backups wold run again. The path was correct but the command (that worked up until 2015.08.07) was this;
/opt/php53/bin/php

But we have been on PHP 5.5x for quite some time so I change it to;
/opt/php55/bin/php
And it worked perfectly.

I will change it to that on the rest of the sites but I feel confident they will all run properly on 2015.08.21. Should I leave this ticket open for two days to confirm? That is up to yu, but thank you so much!

You're welcome! Sure, we can leave the ticket open and make sure that the CRON jobs run as expected. Just let me know.

Hello Dale,
The backups on the sites all ran perfectly now. Thanks so much for all of your help! I would not have known that a change in PHP, made the cron job not be able to function properly any more.

With gratitude please mark this solved.