Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 13:52 CST

paceit

Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes
Have I searched the forum before posting? Yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? n/a
Joomla! version: 1.5.24
PHP version: 5.2.17
MySQL version: 5.0.92
Akeeba Backup version: 3.3.6.Pro

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue.

Description of my issue:

I have never previously had problems with Akeeba backup and use it on multiple sites. I use it to restore, replicate etc so I am well versed in using it. I also usually install akeeba/admin updates directly from within the component backend update link. However, both for Akeeba Pro and also Admin Pro this time round, the backups fail to install. so I manually downloaded them. On installation of Akeeba backup Pro, most of my pages screw up immediately on installation ( see attached screen shot). Previously I assumed it was another issue as when I rolled back both updates the problem persisted, so resorted to a full restore. I then re-installed Akeeba Pro, thinking it was not the cause and immediately my pages screwed up again.

I restored again and installed Admin Pro without issues.
Any ideas as to cause?

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 13:59 CST

nicholas

There is no screenshot, but there is exactly one plugin running on the front-end of your site: the "System - Akeeba Backup Update Notification" plugin. Please try disabling it. There is no other Akeeba Backup-related code which could ever run on the front-end of your site. This piece of code is there, unmodified, since Akeeba Backup 3.3.a1. I am not sure why it could be causing any problems on your site right now.

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:00 CST

paceit

I have a near replica development version of my site, and I installed Akeeba Pro successfully there. what can Akeeba be installing that can cause a problem with the frontend?

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:02 CST

nicholas

What is the difference between the two sites? It could be something as simple as having the error reporting set to Maximum and GZip compression enabled on the site which doesn't work. Having both of these options enabled will cause the site to fail with a blank page on most PHP configurations.

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:03 CST

paceit

I have two plugins enabled. is it one of these?

System - Akeeba Backup Update Check
System - One Click Action

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:04 CST

nicholas

The first one

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:10 CST

paceit

I attached a PDF screenshot. Will attach again.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:12 CST

nicholas

First, please ZIP anything you want to attach and make sure that the result is less than 2Mb - otherwise nothing is attached.

Second, I am not interested as much in the attachment as I am in you letting me know if you did follow my instructions and what happened.

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:14 CST

paceit

I disdabled the plugin, and reinstalled Akeeba (newly downloaded copy) and errors reappeared. check site: https://www.ictgozomalta.eu/ - I need to restore asap as it is a live site.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:15 CST

nicholas

Please review my instructions. I told you to disable the plugin. DO NOT try to reinstall Akeeba Backup. I want you to simply disable the plugin and tell me if that worked. When you re-install Akeeba Backup, the plugin gets automatically enabled again. That's why I am asking about what happens when you disable the plugin. I am trying to narrow down the problem :)

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:16 CST

paceit

psa jpg of error (162kb)

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:18 CST

paceit

Yes, disabling the plugin worked. i.e. I checked the front-end and it was fine with it disabled.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:19 CST

nicholas

OK, that helps. There seems to be a rogue command which turns on the error reporting. I will fix that and come back with a new release 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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:27 CST

nicholas

No, I've checked again and there is no such code in the component or the plugins. I think that the problem is something different. All those error messages had to do with Community ACL. IIRC, Community ACL uses a system plugin to add its functionality to your site. Apparently, it is mandatory for this plugin to be published before any other plugin on your server. So, just go to your Plugin Manager and publish that plugin before Akeeba Backup's update check plugin.

If this does not help, please go to your Global Configuration page, Server tab and set Error Reporting to None.

If this STILL doesn't help, please ask your host about the proper way to suppress PHP warnings and notices from the HTML output display, then contact CorePHP and ask them why Community ACL throws all those warnings if another plugin accessed the Joomla! database before their plugin.

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:48 CST

paceit

Actually, I re-read your question. what was not clear is that you were probably asking me to disable it whilst the new version was in and errors manifesting. I had already restored by then. I have re-installed Akeeba Pro. Problem re-manifests. I then disabled plugin and it makes no difference. i.e. errors remain.

I agree the errors are not related, but why do they manifest themselves only on installation of akeeba?

I did check my global config and error reporting is off.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:50 CST

nicholas

Apart from those two plugins, there is nothing else running on the front-end of your site EXCEPT if you were still using the obsolete, unsupported Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling plugin. If you, please disable it immediately, as it is known to not work with Akeeba Backup 3.3.5 and later. Is this the case on 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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 14:52 CST

paceit

Meanwhile will check the other plugins you mentioned.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:06 CST

paceit

Interestingly it was enabled. However I disabled it, re-installed akeeba - same error (with error reporting still set to none).

Which specific Jomsocial plugin are you referring to ref the order? and is this community type or system type?

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:11 CST

nicholas

I totally lost you. You are doing different things than those I ask you to and I have completely and utterly lost you. Unless you do as I say, there's not a cat's chance in hell of helping me narrow down this issue.

Do the following, and only the following, in the exact order presented here:
1. Reinstall Akeeba Backup 3.3.6
2. Disable the "System - Akeeba Backup Update Check" plugin. Did it work?
3. If 2 did not work, disable the "System - One Click Action" plugin. Did it work now?
4. If 3 did not work, disable the "Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling" plugin. Did it work now?

Don't do anything else except those steps and only under the conditions outlined in the beginning of each step. On which step are you? Is the problem solved or not?

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:28 CST

paceit

1. Installed
2. Disabling does not fix
3. disabling does not fix (at this point (2) is still disabled
4. Lazy plugin is not there when I upgrade

5. I enabled 2 with 3 still disabled and error still remains.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:37 CST

nicholas

Hm, at this point there is no Akeeba Backup code running on your front-end :s If you try deleting the administrator/components/com_akeeba directory, does the problem go away or does it persist? If it persists, sorry, the problem can not possibly be related to Akeeba Backup (the code will have been deleted, no loger there, so it can't run).

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:46 CST

paceit

Fair point. I'll just rename the directory - should that should be enough? Meanwhile I listed 'content' plugins and moved "jsProFields for JomSocial" to position '-1'. This cleared the errors in the main content section of the front end but not the modules.

It still begs the question WHY the problem manifests when Akeeba is upgraded. Clearly from the above the plugin order does seem to affect things.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:47 CST

nicholas

Hm, try renaming the directory. It is equivalent to removing it. The plugin order is something which I suspected all along, but I still can't figure out what's going on :( Let's see what happens when you rename Akeeba Backup's directory.

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:57 CST

paceit

I've renamed akeeba com dir under Admin - no change. I've moved
"jsProFields for JomSocial" to -2 and "Content - SurveyForce Content" to -1 and the errors only manifest in the module positions which pull in content.

If I switch the two around then the errors also re-appearin the main content part of the page.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:59 CST

nicholas

So far it looks like the issue is completely unrelated to Akeeba Backup. One way to be 100% positive about it is, of course, to uninstall Akeeba Backup. IMPORTANT! When you do that, the default output directory (administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup) will be removed, along with any backups in it. If you don't want to lose your backups make sure you have kept a copy of them!

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 15:59 CST

paceit

The remaining errors (in left/right module positions ) still relate to those two items (jsProfileds plugin and Surveyforce component.)

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 16:04 CST

paceit

EEK! Not keen to do that. In general I concur that it is not likely after our tests. But it still begs the question as to what changes in relation to other plugins as a result of the upgrade. I may just have to revert Akeeba for now, and tomorrow build a replica dev site. I could give you access to that, and it won't matter too much what I do with it.

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 16:06 CST

nicholas

The thing is, Akeeba Backup only changes very few things on installation. It changes itself (three directories), it installs one administrator module and three plugins. Before enabling them, it asks you for your permission. The only plugin we haven't tried disabling yet is the "System - System Restore Points" plugin. Does disabling that plugin have any effect? If not, I have no idea what it could be :(

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!

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 16:12 CST

paceit

Good point. I've restored site back to clean state. I'll make a dev copy tomorrow so I have an exact replica. then apply akeeba again, and look at the plugin list/order on live and dev. I'll let you know results. I will also try the last restore points plugin. I appreciate your focus on this issue. cheers, D

Tuesday, 08 November 2011 16:23 CST

nicholas

You're welcome! Please let me know how it goes 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!

Friday, 11 November 2011 13:01 CST

paceit

Hi Nicholas, apologies for delay. I build a dev site to test this the other day but other priorities took over. Interestingly, I remembered your comment regarding "Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling" and disabled it on the /dev site. As soon as I disable it, the errors appear, re-enable it and they disappear. so clearly this is what was happening with the upgrade, as the upgrade was REMOVING this plugin. I've not done anything else now it is easily reproducible without upgrading. I'll do some more investigation elsewhere on Jomsocial side.

Friday, 11 November 2011 14:35 CST

nicholas

And that finally explains what is going on. The version of the Akeeba Backup Lazy Scheduling plugin you had was turning off error reporting as part of its standard operation, which caused the error messages thrown by the other plugin running on your site to disappear. So, there is NO BUG in Akeeba Backup, the bug is in the other plugin. There was an undesirable feature (you may call it a bug, too) in the Lazy Scheduling plugin, as it was masking the other plugin's misdoings. So, there you have it. For me it's case closed, as it doesn't have to do with the software I am producing and in charge of supporting.

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!

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