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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#8585 3.1.b2-pro gets stuck 'Initialising backup & creates dozens of files

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 user8661 on Monday, 30 August 2010 03:50 CDT

user8266
I updated from 3.0.1-pro to latest 3.1.b2-pro but backup gets stuck in 'Initialising backup & creates dozens of backup zip files in the output directory until I aborted the backup. I removed Akeeba Backup & re-installed but I still had the same problem. It looks like there is a bug in the latest version as I saw another posting with a report of similar problems.

I once again removed Akeeba Backup then reinstalled 3.0.1-pro & now it all works OK again so I shall stay on this version until the new version is fixed.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
We have been notified that a low-importance script is causing this issue. I will remove it and publish a new release within the next 1-2 days.

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!

user13439
I have exactly the same problem like nigelbb above.
So we are both waiting for a fix within the next beta. ;)

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I have posted a new developer's release. I would appreciate it if you could test it and report the results. Thank you!

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!

user13439
I just installed the dev-release, but I've got the same problem. Dozens of 19b great .jpa files an a endless loop within the initializing process.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Can you PM me Super Admin credentials (and the URL) to your site?

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!

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Arni, thank you for the login information to your site. When I tried to back your site up (using Firefox 3.6.8 running on Windows 7 Home Premium) it works properly. The backup completes without as much as a hiccup. I guess you already know that, as the backup archive was uploaded to your DropBox which by the time you read this must have synced with your PC. I also see that you have taken another two backups today. Does this mean that you switched browsers and the problem got solved before I logged in to your site?

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!

user13439
The Backups from today were done with 3.01, because of the test with Dropbox.
Now at this moment I tried it again with FF 3.6.8 under XP and it hangs like before.

Edit:
I stop it, but leave the 19b files on the server.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I tried once again, using Chrome and this time I logged in with the German back-end language to make sure that we have no conflict arising from the language files. Same Akeeba Backup version (svn226) as my last test on your site. The backup completes and now uploads to your DropBox account. 2/2 tests are successful from this end, so it can't be the software running on the server.

Sorry, this has to be a problem with your browser. I strongly suggest using a clean installation of Portable Firefox. If neither Portable Firefox works it has to be something in your PC or network setup not allowing the backup to proceed. In that case you may want to temporarily disable any popup blockers, script blockers, antivirus, software firewall or Internet security application running on your PC. Ideally, you can try using a different PC connected to the Internet using a different provider in the off-chance your ISP is doing something strange with the Internet traffic between your PC and your site.

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!

user13439
Ok I'll test it on an other machine tonight.

user13439
-- FF 3.6.8 or IE8 on Win7 at home it works with no problem
-- FF3.6.8 or Chrome 5.03x on XP at my office, it hangs on several PC's

Miracle:
With Akeeba 3.01 it works fine on ALL PC's !!

user11754
I have the same problem with the latest 3.1.b2 release. 3.0 didn't have this problem. When I noticed there was an update, it updated it, and now it's stuck in the very first step of the backup.

user8266
I have had no chance to try the developer release yet but just to confirm that I was using Chrome on my Mac when I encountered the problem with 3.1.b2-pro. It all works perfectly with Chrome or any other browser that I have tried (Safari, FireFox, Opera) with version 3.0.1-pro

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Everybody with a problem using 3.1.b2: Use the developer's release. 3.1.b1 and 3.1.b2 include a Javascript script which seems to blow up on certain browsers, causing the infinite "Initializing" loop. The developer's release was tested and found to be working on Firefox 3.5.11, 3.6.8 and 4.0.b4, Chrome 5 and IE8.

As Arni points out, even the dev release may not work under some configurations. There has been a small change to the Javascript used to process the backup steps. It looks like some browser plugins may interfere with it and cause this issue. Nobody has provided feedback on the installed browser plugins so that I can replicate the problem, therefore I can't solve it. My standard approach is to strongly recommend using a clean installation of Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com, as it is known to work. If someone is willing to tell me the browser plugins, their versions and exact browser version of his non-working configuration I may be able to finally replicate this issue and resolve it. Thank you.

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!

user6022
I also experienced this problem on FF. I tried Chrome and it worked OK.

Specs are as follows
Joomla 1.5.20
Akeeba 3.1.b2
Windows 7 x64
Firefox 3.6.8
Adblock Plus 1.2.2 (disabled)
Adobe Contribute Toolbar 6.0
Clippings 3.1.2
Firebug 1.5.4
Google Gears 0.5.36.0
Java Console 6.0.18
Logmein, Inc. Remote Access Plugin 1.0.0.608
MeasureIt 0.4 (disabled)
NoScript 2.0.2.3
Trend Micro NSC Firefox Extension 5.8.0.1092 (disabled)
Web Developer 1.1.8
Xmarks 3.8.6
YSlow 2.0.7

user11754
Hey, I'm using:

Mac OSX 10.6.4
Firefox 3.6.8 (only 1 plugin: Firefox PDF plugin for Mac OS X, version 1.1.3)
Akeeba 3.1.b2

antonin
Hello
having same infinite loop problem ( beta or dev )
I'm using WIN7-64 + FF 3.6.8 with several stuffs like Webdevelopper / Firebug / Xmarks / Skype. ..

Good luck detective !
++
antonin

user8661
Same problem for me with both b2 and b3.
... and the automatic update didn't work allso.
Standing-by b4 ??

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
No issue can be "magically" solved unless I am able to reproduce it in order to debug it, so there is really no point in waiting for beta 4. I tested beta 3 with Firefox 3.5.11, 3.6.8 and 4.0.b4, they all worked. So did Firefox Portable 3.6.8. Of course, Chrome 5, Safari 4, Internet Explorer 8 and Opera 10 all worked flawlessly. Which exact version of Firefox are you using?

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!

user8661
Which exact version of Firefox are you using?

For me it's Firefox 3.6.8.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
OK, this is officially frustrating! Am I the only person who hasn't got a single problem with Firefox 3.6.8? I just tried FF 3.6.8 on Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit and 64-bit, as well as Linux 64-bit without issues. Which operating system are you using? This is the only variable I haven't taken into account yet. Hopefully, I will be able to replicate it if I find the exact OS under which the error occurs :)

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!

user13492
I just saw this thread paralleling mine where the same problem is observed. Earlier today I had this problem, but it is now gone. The only thing that I have changed is to reboot my machines and switch from mcaffee to norton system protection. By any chance do the other systems seeing this problem also use mcaffee? At this point I am really curious about this one, and suspecting mcafee is the culprit.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
I just saw your message on the other thread. I am going to test using McAfee antispam today. It's very possible that an antispam solution can cause this kind of issues.

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!

user8364
I do not think this is browser related. I use Akeeba Pro on two sites. This morning I upgraded both to 3.1.b.3 and one site works fine while the other hits this initialize loop.

One thing that catches my eye is that on the site which works I see the Akeeba logo/icon at the top left next to the title Akeeba Backup::Backup Now. On the site which does not work there is no icon.

Is there some kind of permissions difference between the prior and current release?

I am a Norton Internet Security user (totally current) so McAfee isn't the issue. I also disabled my antivirus but this did not resolve the problem. I'll keep experimenting and will report if I find something.

Firefox 3.6.8
Addons:
Java Console 6.0.21
Norton IPS 2.0
Norton Toolbar 4.6

user8364
Interesting also:

On the Site which works 'Administer Backup Files' shows all prior backups although they are all marked obsolete.

On site which is failing, all files in 'Administer Backup Files' now have no description and status is changed to 'Failed'

One final thought. I tried several times to 'auto-install' the upgrade on the failing site, and then finally succeeded by doing the upgrade manually. On the site which is working I never tried the auto-install, but just did the manual install.

ArcAdmin

user8364
I found the following in my site error log. Slight edit to the URL only.

[Sun Aug 29 05:15:29 2010] [error] [client 173.12.4.1] File does not exist: /home/xxx/public_html/media/com_akeeba/plugins/theme, referer: http://xxxx.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=eff
[Sun Aug 29 05:15:29 2010] [error] [client 173.12.4.1] File does not exist: /home/xxx/public_html/media/com_akeeba/plugins/theme, referer: http://xxxx.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=eff
[Sun Aug 29 05:14:31 2010] [error] [client 173.12.4.1] File does not exist: /home/xxx/public_html/media/com_akeeba/plugins/theme, referer: http://xxxx.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=multidb
[Sun Aug 29 05:14:31 2010] [error] [client 173.12.4.1] File does not exist: /home/xxx/public_html/media/com_akeeba/plugins/theme, referer: http://xxxx.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_akeeba&view=multidb

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
The update vs. install doesn't have anything to do with the problem. In both cases, a full installation of Akeeba Backup is performed. In fact, when you choose to update, Akeeba Backup downloads the full installation package, extracts it on your site's tmp directory and instructs the standard Joomla! installer (com_install) to perform an installation from this directory.

The error log entries also do not relate to the backup. They are file checks from the Multiple Database Definitions and off site directories inclusion filters.

The infinite loop does cause lots of backup attempt entries in the Administer Backup Files page without a description, it's part of the issue at hand.

I tend to believe that on some site and browser combinations there is no tag returned, causing an infinite initialization loop. I am now trying to work around it and will release a new developer's release either later today or early tomorrow.

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!

user8266
I just updated a site on a different server to my previous attempt (different web hosting company) & again found that it stuck in a loop & created dozens of files when I used Chrome 5.0.375.127 (latest on Mac OS X 10.6.4) with no add-ons. However it worked OK when I used Firefox 3.6.8 with a variety of add-ons (Firebug, Xmarks, Screengrabber etc

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Beta 2 and beta 3 have a confirmed issue. I published developer's release 240 yesterday which permanently fixes it. This release is going to be published later today as 3.1.RC1.

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!

user8661
Beta 2 and beta 3 have a confirmed issue. I published developer's release 240 yesterday which permanently fixes it. This release is going to be published later today as 3.1.RC1.

GREAT !!! Thanks !!!!!

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