Support

I'm guilty.
I get this error because I didn't check Filezilla's default transfer type before downloading my backups from godaddy to a "safe" off-site location (and to make space on Godaddy). I inadvertently used ASCII mode instead of Binary.

Invalid Header in Archive File, Part 1 88056157

It's a 2-part archive JPA and J01. 2gig and 900meg respectively.

I found fixzgz at www.gzip.org which others have used to recovered archives with the same problem. It didn't work for me I then searched for a good binary editor to attempt to locate the spot of error 88045157 and possibly remove the extra CR (carriage return) bytes inserted by the transfer.

Questions:
- Do you know of a good binary editor and do you think this might work?
- Kickstart did extract some files from which I may begin to rebuild the site. Do you think the files that were extracted are only from JPA? Or might some be from J01?
- Where is the database data stored in the archives and, if I have it extracted in some file, do you think I can recover it and get it into mysql somehow?
- Do you think it's worth trying to recover (using kickstart) other backups (which I have) further back in time in hopes of finding one where the ascii transfer didn't hurt it?

As you can see I'm desperate given the site will not be easy to re-build.

Any answers, ideas, thoughts, encouragement is greatly appreciated.

Thank you Davide. Very helpful and encouraging.

Some related questions:

• What did the end of your first sentence mean? "rather than a log files was included." Did I miss your explanation of what might have happened? If it wasn't an ascii/binary issue then maybe my earlier backups are good?
  If kickstart had a log file, where would it be and what's it's name?
  In the installation/sql folder there is:
  databases.ini (I understand this)
  52 site.s## files site.s01 thru site.s52
  site.sql
  The site.___ files are filled with lots of INSERT and CREATEs. Is it simply a matter of running all those commands in mysql? In what sequence? Is site.sql any different than the other files? Is it just the first one and therefor site.s01 is the second?

Thank you Thank you Thank you.

Thanks Davide.

How can I avoid having log files in the Akeeba backup? I don't work with log files in Joomla folders so I don't know where they are or what creates them.

I will work on the db tonight (EST) and let you know how it goes. Can I assume once I run those commands then the joomla backend will see all the data in their respective places? Menus, categories, content, modules (?) etc. etc. Is it best to run the SQL on a mostly empty joomla install? I ask because what if, for example, I have already loaded akeeba admin on the fresh install and the sql attempts to re-install a possibly older version. Can that even happen? I'm just trying to understand any gotcha's before I dig into it.

Thanks.

Wow. Okay. I'll try but I'll be surprised if I get all that right. I'll let you know.
You've been very helpful.

One last question. Aren't log files just text files? What makes them different from any other text file?

Thanks.

I've now tried to restore two earlier backups. Each resulted in the same error but at earlier points.

As you can imaging I'm a bit nervous about running backups.

1. How can I be sure there aren't any large log files inside before running the backup? I could search the folders before running each backup.

2. I do have some very large files (user downloadable files). Several 4 meg pdf files and one 39meg executable program which users can download. The 39meg file and many (not sure if all) of the large pdf files were recovered in the last few failed kickstarts. Might these be a problem? They're not log files but they are big?

Thank you.

I have succeeded in finding a backup that doesn't generate this Invalid Header error and therefor must not have had a truncated file in it.

It may be helpful for others to know how I got past the Ajax errors which also occurred often.
First I followed the instructions by using FTP in Kickstart. Unfortunately that seemed to only delay the ajax errors to later in the extract. What I found was that the Ajax errors occurred when I had other significant traffic on my home/office network. Avoid high bandwidth applications on your network while running a kickstart recovery. I found that the same backup which had Ajax errors (still using FTP) would run fine overnight when no one else was on the network. So I ran them after everyone went to bed. This was important because my kickstart extracts took several hours.

Thanks for all your help.

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