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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#34380 mcrypt depreciated and removed from server's php, how to encrypt backups?

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 on Saturday, 20 February 2021 20:17 CST

adoucette

Hello,

First, as always, thanks for the great software. Akeeba Backup Pro and Admin Tools have really served us well over the years!

I've noticed recently that my JPS backups are no longer encrypted. It appears that my host (siteground) no longer supports mcrypt as this was depreciated and removed from php updates

https://www.php.net/manual/en/migration71.deprecated.php#migration71.deprecated.ext-mcrypt

They will not re-install mcrypt for this purpose. How should I go about ensuring my akeeba site and database backups are encrypted? Is an update to akeeba forthcoming that makes use of a different encryption engine?

Thank you,

Ari

adoucette

Additionally, the server does have OpenSSL version 1.0.2r

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

mCrypt was deprecated in PHP 7.1 and hasn't been in active development since 2003. All the way back in August 2016 we updated our code to check if the PHP OpenSSL extension is installed and use it instead of mCrypt.

As long as your version of PHP has the PHP OpenSSL extension installed and enabled it will be used to encrypt your settings and your backups. Check your phpinfo() output. If the PHP OpenSSL extension is not installed ask your host to install it.

FWIW, SiteGround with cPanel seemed to have the PHP OpenSSL extension installed and enabled by default, at least when we were using their hosting services.

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!

adoucette

I think this was a mis-configuration on my part. I had set the backup type to be the "main site database only (sql file)" option. So the output was plain text sql files, even though the archiver engine was set to JPS. Now that I've set the database type to "all configured databases (archive file)", akeeba backup is ouputing a .jps file as expected.

Thank you for your clarification about mcrypt vs openssl. I had thought mcrypt was required from the tooltip in the archiver engine configuration (attached).

 

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Yup, the Main site database only will produce unencrypted SQL files for use with the mysql CLI tool, phpMyAdmin, Adminer, DBeaver, HeidiSQL, Sequel Ace and other commonly used MySQL management tools. Support requests about the same misconfiguration you ultimately caught used to be a lot more common. That's why I added “(.sql files)“ and “(archive files)” to each backup type. I thought it'd make it easier for you to catch this kind of misconfiguration.

Good catch on the tooltip. I only ever searched for mcrypt in the code, not the language files. I will amend it for the next version.

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!

System Task
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