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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#32673 CRON jobs do not work

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

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Akeeba Backup version
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Latest post by thalueng on Tuesday, 17 March 2020 05:51 CDT

thalueng
Both CRON jobs (akeeba-backup.php, akeeba-altbackup.php) terminate with ERROR: Call to undefined function Joomla\CMS\Language\simplexml_load_file() at line 656 in file LanguageHelper.php

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Please note that this error message comes from Joomla itself, not Akeeba Backup.

The problem is that the PHP CLI executable does not have the PHP simplexml module loaded and enabled. This is a requirement for running Joomla.

Kindly note that BOTH the version AND the configuration of the PHP CLI executable (used in CRON jobs) and the PHP-FastCGI / PHP-CGI executable or PHP Apache module (used to serve your site through the web server) can be different. Just because Joomla works when accessed from a browser is not a guarantee that it will work in a CLI application / CRON job.

Please contact your host and tell them the following (you can copy and paste the following): "I cannot execute any of the the files in the cli directory of my site through a CRON job. I have been told that this is because my PHP CLI does not have the same php.ini configuration as the PHP version serving my site through the web server. The current fatal error that prevents me from executing any of these files states that the simplexml_load_file() function is unavailable, i.e. the PHP SimpleXML module is not being loaded. Please take the necessary steps to ensure that the configuration go my PHP CLI matches my web environment."

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

thalueng
Hi Nicholas,

thank you, problem solved. To help other users, here are the detailed steps:

I'm running my sites on a Debian 10 server running apache 2.4 and php 7.4. php-xml is not installed by default, after "sudo apt install php-xml" or "sudo apt install php7.4-xml" everything will work as expected. Check that the apache module is available after install with "php -m".

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