Support

Well, I am developing, testing and using Remote CLI on Mac OS X. What prevents you from doing the same? After all, Mac OS X automatically(!) installs the PHP command line executable for you, without even asking. All you have to do is run Terminal :)

You're welcome :)

If you want a plugin which slows down your site and creates hidden IFrames (killing your search engine ranking), has the possibility to deplete your disk space (taking down your site), is not reliable and requires quality hosting to operate, then yes, I can revive the Lazy Scheduling plugin. But I'm not in the business of creating dysfunctional software which I know that can't be fixed – especially since I can't fix it because of server-side restrictions (ranging from file permissions, to CPU usage quotas, to unrealistic database timeouts). That's why it was discontinued and I did explain all of those reasons almost a year ago in the release announcement of the then-current version.

I understand that the other ways, which require some basic skills regarding setting up CRON jobs, are not very friendly for anyone who isn't willing to spend one or two hours learning a new and useful site administration skill. To this end, I have provided you with step-by-step instructions of using webcron.org to automate your backups as an easy-to-use, viable alternative. The instructions are in our documentation which we urge you to read before using the software. Look for "Using webcron.org to automate your backups". Scheduling a full year of daily backups costs about 1$. And, please note, that this is an OPTIONAL way to schedule your backups. You can always learn how to set up CRON jobs. We do have step-by-step instructions in our documentation (check our User's Guide or our Walkthroughs section for instructions regarding CPanel). And we do have this forum where we can help you setting up a CRON job. So, claiming that the backup is half the programme you bought because you don't want to read or ask for help is a bit unfair to me and the lengths I have gone to to give you alternatives, document everything and help you.

At which point does the download imply that the Lazy Scheduling plugin is included? Because last time I checked I had removed all references to that plugin from every product description page.

If that's such a huge problem to you people, I can update the Lazy Scheduling plugin to work with Akeeba Backup 3.3.5 or later and release it again. But you will have to use it at your own risk. Let me reiterate the known problems you will suffer by installing this plugin and which can't be fixed:

1 - Running a backup is a resource intensive task which has to run within a limited amount of time so as not to have consistency issues with your files and database contents. The plugin can not do that, because a Joomla! plugin is ONLY called when a human being is accessing your site with a browser. Therefore you MAY have consistency issue, so you must ALWAYS test your backups.

2 - The backup needs to run a rather large number of steps to complete. These steps run only when someone is visiting your site. It is possible that your site has less visitor traffic than what is required to perform a complete backup within, let's say, a single day. This will most likely to you scheduling one backup every day and getting only one backup every 2-3 days. This is a known issue.

3 - For the same reasons, the duration of the backup performed by the Lazy Scheduling plugin will be off the charts. Usually, it will be something like 4-6 hours, when a backend backup lasts only 45 seconds. This is not a bug, it's a consequence of relying to an unreliable source of automation (traffic) for a critical task (backup)

4 - Visiting the Akeeba Backup Control Panel page in the back-end will kill any in-progress backup. This may cause a new backup to be started on the next page load (front- or back-end). Again, this is not a bug, it's how it's supposed to work.

5 - You can not use multiple backup profiles with different scheduling periods. YOu can only use one backup profile, with one scheduling period.

6 - If a Lazy Scheduling backup is in progress and you try to take a new backup with the same profile using any other means (e.g. back-end backup), the results are unspecified. Most likely both backups will be broken or they will never end, eating up the entirety of your free disk space and causing the inability to access your site or even the suspension of your hosting account.

7 - Since we do not want your page load time to be 10 seconds or more, we will have to use a hidden IFrame to run the backup while the user is viewing your site. This means that they will see the page load spinner in Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome continuously spinning while they are visiting your site, probably confusing them into thinking that your site loads forever and losing some visitors. Search engines will also see that behaviour and penalise your site for having an unearthly page loading time, losing you more visitors.

8 - If your cache or backup output directory is not writable, you might end up filling up your database with pending or failed backup records. If only the cache directory is unwritable, you may end up with multiple backups taken one after the other, depleting your free disk space.

9 - If the visitor abandons the page while the backup is running, some servers will cause the backup archive to be corrupt. Unfortuantely, this can not be tested beforehand, therefore you have to test your backups to make sure you are not bitten by this issue.

10 - If your visitor has turned off Javascript on her browser, the backup won't run

11 - There is a small window, up to 500msec, where two successive visits might break the backup. It is the time window between when the plugin checks if another visitor has caused the backup to start/step and starting/stepping the backup. This will lead to broken backups, therefore you have to check all your backups to make sure they can be restored.

12 - If the backup fails for any reason, e.g. you run out of disk space, the results are unspecified. Typically, multiple backups will be attempted until you disable the plugin or your database space runs out and your site stops working.

If despite these known issue you insist that using the Lazy Scheduling plugin is better than using a reliable CRON job, all right, I will revive the plugin. But because of those 12 reasons I am not going to support it if it causes a broken backup, kills your site's search engine ranking or ends up in eating up all your space and lead to suspension of your hosting account. As you see, these reasons can not be worked around, unless you replace the plugin with CRON jobs (which is what I did, only to receive your complaints).

Fair enough?

OK, fair enough. Please check the download page for Akeeba Backup in 12 hours. I will publish it there as a separate download you can install on your sites.