Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Friday, 12 March 2021 05:48 CST

richarddenhamhill

I have just gone updated the website johnwestonstretton.org.uk to the latest Akeeba Back up and Admin Tools versions and am getting a blank white screen problem for both.

All other components and plugins are working successfully since update.

Reported error in server logs is:

AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Warning: require_once(/var/www/vhosts/johnwestonstretton.org.uk/httpdocs/media/fef/php/AkeebaFEFLoader.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/vhosts/johnwestonstretton.org.uk/httpdocs/media/fef/fef.php on line 531PHP message: PHP Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/var/www/vhosts/johnwestonstretton.org.uk/httpdocs/media/fef/php/AkeebaFEFLoader.php' (include_path='.:/opt/plesk/php/7.4/share/pear') in /var/www/vhosts/johnwestonstretton.org.uk/httpdocs/media/fef/fef.php on line 531', referer: https://johnwestonstretton.org.uk/administrator/index.php?option=com_config

I would welcome your advice on how to prevent this.

Richard

Friday, 12 March 2021 06:21 CST

nicholas

You have hit upon a Joomla bug which I have been privately reporting to the Joomla project since 2014. The Joomla project never fixed it and pretended that it had never heard about it. When I made a public report about this and another two issues I had been reporting over the last 8 years on early March 2021 I was met with open hostility and threats against my company.

The Joomla bug I am talking about occurs in a small minority of sites. When you are trying to install an update to an extension Joomla forgets to copy all of the files present in the update package.

There is a simply but annoying solution. Download the update ZIP files. Install them on your site using Extensions, Manage, Upload & Install twice in a row, without uninstalling the extension before or in between. The updated files will now be written correctly and the extension will work without a problem.

Unfortunately this bug is present in Joomla itself. We believe that it has existed since 2007, when the first implementation of the Joomla extensions installer with support for in-place updates was released (Joomla 1.5.5). The double installation tends to work because the second time you are performing the installation it's no longer an update, it's reinstalling the same version Joomla has ostensibly installed before. This seems to be going through a slightly different code path which doesn't trigger this Joomla bug.

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!

Friday, 12 March 2021 08:45 CST

richarddenhamhill

Thank you, Nicholas,

In fact, I had to uninstall both Akeeba Backup and Admin Tools Pro before I could get this to work, as just reinstalling twice did not work. Still I am happy it is resolved.

Thanks as always for your kind help.

Best wishes

Richard

Friday, 12 March 2021 08:53 CST

nicholas

For completeness' sake, the other workaround I'd have proposed would be to simply install FEF 2.0.2 on your site. Uninstalling and reinstalling loses backup settings and backups in Akeeba Backup and your web application firewall and .htaccess settings in Admin Tools. That's why I avoid telling you to do that. The potential for a mess-up is bigger if you uninstall.

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!

Friday, 12 March 2021 10:27 CST

richarddenhamhill

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks for your reply. I am only adding to the conversation for the benefit of anyone else who experiences the issue.

I appreciate your comments on uninstalling but we already had a back up to refer to if everything went really wrong and have been using Admin Tools for a good number of years now, so it is pretty easy for us to move to a default installation. It felt worth taking the risk anyway.

Interestingly the moment we completed installation, then FEF requested an update from 2.0.2 to 2.0.3. Would simply reinstalling FEF have done the trick by itself?

As always, thank you for your help and involvement. It's much appreciated.

Best wishes

Richard

Friday, 12 March 2021 11:15 CST

nicholas

Yes, an update to FEF was made available after the release of Akeeba Backup 8.0.2 and Admin Tools 6.0.3. It fixes an inconsequential but annoying issue. The CSS and JS file preload hints were wrong. This caused warnings in your browser console and HTTP 404 or 403 errors being recorded in your web server log. This issue didn't warrant a full release of all of our software but we felt it was something that should be fixed, hence the FEF update.

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!

Sunday, 11 April 2021 20:17 CDT

System Task

system

This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.

Edited by on 2021-04-11 20:17 CDT

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