The way JoomlaPack works is of great importance in the event of troubleshooting. Therefore, this is a small presentation of the inner workings of JoomlaPack. You should read this section even if you are familiar with JoomlaPack; the work flow has changed ever since version 1.2.1.
Each backup procedure consists of three individual operations (or domains in JoomlaPack jargon), occurring one after the other. Each operation is performed in several steps to avoid timing out. The operations are:
- Initialization
When you start the backup, JoomlaPack has to do some housekeeping. It will create the (now empty) archive file, load filter settings and clean-up after any previous failed backup attempts. After that, the archive will be loaded with the files which make up the selected installer. The inclusion of the installer files happens without using temporary files, for security reasons (a vast improvement since version 1.2) This all happens transparently, without you ever noticing it.
After this short initialization a transparent process begins, in which the installer files are included in the backup archive. This can be performed in multiple steps, but doesn't appear in the backup operations check-list. On most servers it completes almost instantaneously.
- Database backup
The database is dumped in SQL files. Each step consists of dumping a pre-set, user-definable, amount of data of a single table. The SQL files are added to the archive at the end of the operation and the temporary files are disposed of immediately.
- Archive creation
This is the step in which your files are added to the backup archive. JoomlaPack starts scanning your site's file system structure for files and directories, applying any directory / file exclusion filters you may have imposed. Upon finishing scanning a directory, it will add the files to the archive. To counter time-outs on directories with many and/or big files, it will keep backing up on a single step until a user-definable, pre-set amount of data has been archived. The rest of the data, if any, will be archived on the next step.
- Finalization
Finally, JoomlaPack performs some housekeeping, removing the temporary files and temporary database entries. This operation is logged as a special domain named 'finale'.
