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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#8503 Kickstart error

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

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by user25600 on Friday, 31 December 2010 01:10 CST

user12157
Getting the folloiwng error when trying to do a kickstart restore:

Invalid AJAX data received:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function gzinflate() in /home/zovation/public_html/kickstart.php on line 2911

Running latest versions of Akkeeba

dlb
What format is your backup in, zip or jpa?


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)

user12157
It is jpa

dlb
Thank you. I'll have to flag this one for Nicholas.


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)

user12157
OK - Thanks

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Your host doesn't have the PHP zlib extension installed.

WARNING!!! DANGER AHEAD!!! At this point, I strongly suggest switching hosts, because Joomla! itself requires PHP's zlib extension. If you can't convince your host to enable this feature, you are heading straight to a huge pile of trouble.

If you want to try your luck, you may proceed with the instructions below solely at your own risk. If your site doesn't work, sorry, but I told you, I won't be able to help you. If it does work, the extensions installer will not be able to function at all, turning on GZip page compression in the Global Configuration will kill your site and any extension which uses the zlib extension will crash. If you still want to proceed despite all these warnings, here you go:

You can extract the JPA archive locally, using Akeeba eXtract Wizard. Then, upload all extracted files to your host by FTP. You should be able to access the installation script at the URL http://www.yoursite.com/installation/index.php. Once you have gone through the restoration procedure, remove the installation directory with FTP.

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!

user12157
Thanks - I am switching hosts...

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

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!

user25600
I was getting this same error... I'm on a dedicated server so I installed/enabled zlib myself, checked that it was all enabled in phpinfo, asked customer support to check also and they showed me they had a gzinflate and gzdeflate function working in a separate script. But still it wouldn't work. I ended up having to just do a manual restore. But I thought I would mention this here in case it's a bug that needs to be looked into.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
If you are getting the exact same error, the rest of what you are saying can't be true. This error means that PHP can not find the gzinflate() function. This is caused because:
a. the PHP zlib extension is not installed or activated for the specific user account, or
b. because disable_functions doesn't allow the use of this function for the specific user account

I can't be a bug in Kickstart's code because, simply put, it's PHP complaining that it can't find a system function provided by ZLib. The method name is not misspelled, which is the only bug that could ever happen to trigger this error. Ergo, the server setup is not as you think it is and you have to fix it.

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!

user25600
Thanks for the reply, Nicholas :)

I really am getting that exact same error (I searched for it which is how I found this thread), and everything I wrote is completely true! But what you're saying makes sense, so I assume there must just be something funky going on server-side then. Because I have my site restored manually now, and I'm able to install Joomla components.

I'm also able to run the snippet below from a file:
$compressed = gzdeflate('Compress me', 9);
$uncompressed = gzinflate($compressed);
echo $uncompressed;

and get the output 'Compress me.'

Am I right in thinking that as long as that works, Joomla will run okay?

My site is restored now so it's not a big deal... I guess this will just remain a mystery. Very strange.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Just for sanity reasons, please:
- make sure you are running the test file from the very same account you tried running Kickstart from. Make sure you are trying from the very same directory as well.
- Copy and paste the exact error message you are getting from Kickstart. I want to see it for myself.

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!

user25600
For sanity reasons? Haha. Actually I think the problem was that zlib output compression wasn't enabled. Could that be it? Joomla extension installs work fine, and so did that PHP snippet I posted above. But my error log had the same error as this thread, several times. And kickstart.php (latest version) said INVALID_FILE_HEADER within seconds of me running it.

Unfortunately I've since deleted the error log and can't find a local temporary file of it, but how I found this thread was because I searched for the error I got. And how I ran the files was... I had kickstart.php in my public_html directory, and I had a PHP file with that previously mentioned PHP snippet also in the public_html directory. And I ran both from the browser.

But like I said, I suspect the output compression was the issue. If that's the case, and even if it's not, sorry for troubling you with this. My site is running now so that's all that matters to me. And I have successfully used kickstart.php in the past and it was a huge lifesaver, so thanks :D

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