UNiTE, Remote CLI, eXtract Wizard

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 07:13 CST

user8269

Hi,
I am a neewbie to this.
I have backed-up with joomlapack 2.4.1 a copy of my live site, and try to restore it with kickstart 2.4.1 to a test server. File permissions are set at 755.
Everything seems to run smoothly without errors.

until I go to the site as then I get a 500 internal server error. Looking into the directory it seems that the htaccess file is missing after the restore.
I have read most of your relevant forum discussions but I still haven't been able to fix it. Can you help?

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 11:12 CST

dlb

Lack of an .htaccess file usually doesn't cause a problem, an .htaccess with a bad command in it will.

Kickstart renames the .htaccess file to htaccess.txt when it is extracted. The file is renamed back to .htaccess in the cleanup step in kickstart (the second "here"). Check for an htaccess.txt file on your local site. If there isn't one there, then copy the .htaccess from the live site. That would be a little worrisome.

The 500 error should post more information in your local http server error log. There may be a clue there.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: 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)

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 11:28 CST

user8269

There was no htaccess.txt on my local site. I copied the .htaccess but I get the same error.
How can I get the server error log, I have never done this before, I am sorry

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 11:49 CST

dlb

On a Linux machine, the log is generally in /var/log/ I have one server that stores them in httpd (Mandriva fork) and another that stores them in apache2 (Debian Lenny).

On Windows, I think there is a tray icon that controls your server, the log may be there. If it isn't, I'll have to holler for Nicholas, I don't have a Windows html server installed.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: 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)

Tuesday, 09 February 2010 17:57 CST

user8269

I have a QNAP NAS server with build in joomla, apache, MSQL DB etc. Logiing seems to be not standard enabled.

My problem seem to be bigger than restoring the back up. My real site was down. it appeared to be a problem with the caching. I could try to make another backup and see if it works
Last question, you say do not install a joomla installation when you restore. What about the database? In the installer4 window 3 it asks which database to use, should it create a new one or re-use an old one?
Tnx

Wednesday, 10 February 2010 02:14 CST

dlb

JoomlaPack never has sufficient rights to create a database on a commercial host. It can create the database on a local host if you give it the root password. I don't want Joomla! using my root password, even on a local machine. :D I create the MySQL database and user manually, then give the installer the details on the database screen. Once the database is created on my local server, I just reuse the database.

Backups and caching are not friends. The danger is that your server serves JoomlaPack from the cache and not what is really on the site.

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: 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)

Wednesday, 10 February 2010 09:48 CST

user8269

Thanks for the feedback about the database, so I know that I did the right thing.
The cache could have been the problem, I disabled it all and now the site performs faster in Yslow

I made a new back up and tried to restore it with kickstart. I receive no error whatsoever. When I go to the site on the local server to see if it works I get the 500 error. If I check the dir. I do not see the .htaccess copied in the restore. Your suggestion to copy it does not solve the 500 error.
I guess your are going to ask me for the log again. If yes, I need to find out how to enable the log reporting as it is not straightforward for me.
Tnx

Wednesday, 10 February 2010 13:43 CST

dlb

Yes, we're back to the log. Some of the "usual suspects" don't happen on local servers. It worries me that the .htaccess keeps disappearing. I'll flag this for Nicholas, he can help you with the log. :)

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: 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)

Wednesday, 10 February 2010 21:12 CST

nicholas

Well, this is a local server and it's an HTTP 500 server error. Why not look at the Apache error log and read exactly why it throws the error? When we have an error log, it's counter-productive having me guess :D

About the disappearing .htaccess. On Linux, MacOS X and all UNIX derivatives dotfiles (files whose name starts with a dot) are hidden. Since you are running your site on a NAS, my best guess is that it's using Linux and that's why you are NOT supposed to see .htaccess, even though it's there.

Though, one quick pointer: most local servers do not load mod_rewrite by default. It's the usual suspect for white pages on a local server (Joomla! uses mod_rewrite to serve SEO URLs; its .htaccess loads it even if you have disabled SEO URLs in Global Configuration). Make sure that it's being loaded, by editing your Apache configuration file. If, however, this is a PHP error... guess what? You have to read the server's error log.

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 February 2010 10:59 CST

user8269

Hi,
Somebody helped me to see the error log and the problem seemed to be .htaccess and header problem. Even filezilla sometimes doesn't see the .htaccess. It still appears that the .htaccess is not restored after checking it with a telnet session (who does display all files correctly)
Copying the .htaccess and renaming it to htaccess.txt brought the site up, although partly...

Many of the images of the style sheet like top menus, footer, header etc are not displayed.
Any idea what to do next?
tnx

Friday, 12 February 2010 11:07 CST

dlb

There should be a setting in FileZilla that will allow hidden files to be displayed. I don't recall exactly where the setting is.

The file should be named .htaccess. We were looking for htaccess.txt because of what kickstart does. Please rename it back and try again. :)

Dale L. Brackin
Support Specialist

English: 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)

Saturday, 13 February 2010 09:10 CST

nicholas

Sometimes .htaccess will never show up in FileZilla, no matter what you do. There is a server configuration setting - the kind you can't modify as a user - which defines this behavior. Even though you don't see it, there it is. In FileZilla you can initiate a manual transfer of .htaccess which will convince you that the file is really restored on your server.

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, 14 February 2010 12:05 CST

user8269

Hi,
The restore is successful. The three issues that caused the problems were:

* Caching(turning it off solved it)
* .htaccess on the NAS, first the disappearing problem and secondly the problem that the NAS could not handle the file (renaming it to htaccess.txt solved it)
* a compression plugin called CssJSCompress, (turning that off restored everything to normal)
The problems could all be caused during the restoring on the NAS, I never received a Joomlapack or kickstart error. Thanks for your great support
Hubert

Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:35 CST

nicholas

Yes, NAS are usually not full blown web servers. The lack of the .htaccess file will certainly cause a problem if you enable SEO URLs, as it seems that your NAS doesn't have mod_rewrite installed (hence the problems with having the .htaccess file). The .htaccess file being invisible is not a problem, is a feature of your NAS. I have seen that on many hosts, they force dot-files to be absolutely invisible. The same happens if I connect to my Linux box over Windows network neighborhood (SMB); I can't see dot-files ;)

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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