Support

I think you are confusing a few things which are unrelated with each other :)

What had actually happened and why this is unrelated to your issue?

Back in May 2016, that's 16 months ago, there was a bug in the post-installation script of Akeeba Backup which would remove all update sites from all extensions on your site. We had published a fix for that which was necessary at the time. This is no longer necessary for many reasons.

For starters, that bug in the post-installation script was fixed within hours of being reported. We made an emergency release. As a result only ~100 sites (out of several hundred thousands using our software) were affected.

If you were affected back in May 2016 you'd have known as it'd be impossible to update anything - including Joomla! - in the meantime. Moreover, if you were to go to Extensions, Manage, Update Sites (NOT Update!!!) you would see zero entries. Installing the fix we had published back in May 2016 would have corrected that. This fix is now obsolete and must not be used.

In the meantime, our fix became obsolete. Going to Extensions, Manage, Update Sites and clicking on the Rebuild button in the toolbar does exactly what our fixed does. Why had we published the fix, then? Because in May 2016 the Rebuild feature in Joomla! wasn't published. It took a few more months for the new Joomla! version with that feature to be released but our affected users needed an immediate fix. Hence the emergency fix we had published back in May 2016.

Finally, as far as Akeeba Backup itself is concerned, when installing it and most definitely when you visit its Control Panel page the update site will be added to the database if it's not already there. Therefore, at the very least, updating Akeeba Backup itself would work. Since you say you cannot update Akeeba Backup your problem isn't with update sites.

How to proceed from here?

Before you do anything, log in to the back-end of your site as a Super User, using English as the display language. You need to be Super User, not just an Administrator, to do what I'm about to tell you. Using English is extremely important, too! Translations may not be accurate. I've seen a lot of people not following my instructions because translation mistakes confuse them and they think that my instructions are inaccurate instead (they are not: unlike outsourced support that pastes outdated information from a script, I am a developer, I care about my users and I always test my instructions on a development site as I am typing them, to make sure I'm not saying anything wrong to you).

First of all verify that the Update Sites do exist. Please go to Extensions, Manage, Update Sites (DO NOT click on the Update menu item, it's a different thing altogether). Over there you will see a list of all the update sites, i.e. where Joomla! will be looking for updates. If you do not see anything, click on Rebuild.

Now that you do see the update sites, let's see if Joomla! can fetch updates:

1. Go to Extensions, Manage, Update (NOT Update Sites).
2. Click on Clear Cache.
3. When the page reloads click on Options.
4. Set the "Updates Caching (in hours)" to 3.
5. Set "Minimum Stability" to Stable.
6. Click on Save & Close.
7. The page reloads and you see the Update page again.
8. Click on Clear Cache again.
9. Click on Find Updates
10. Assuming that any of the extensions were out of date you will see updates. Check the box next to one of them and click on the Update button.

If you see an Akeeba Backup update but cannot install it: you may have to enter the Download ID. Please follow your personalised instructions for doing so. Do keep in mind that you need to follow all of these instructions, even if you think you don't need to. The last two paragraphs there are actually very important. Don't skip over them!

If you do not see any updates and are absolutely certain that there are (you have checked manually) please contact your host. Most likely they have a firewall in front of their server which blocks connections to the update sites.

If you can only not see any updates for extensions whose update sites are on HTTPS then you need to again contact your host. They will need to make sure that they have compiled PHP, libcurl and the PHP cURL module against a modern version of OpenSSL (1.1.0c or later) and that they have set up a system-wide Certificate Authority cache file for CURL in their php.ini. If they have missed either of these requirements your site will be unable to contact secure (HTTPS) update servers.

I hope this information helps!

#1 and #2 are incompatible with each other. Are they happening on the same site?! Joomla! doesn't have any update sites for extensions, it cannot possibly find any updates for Akeeba Backup - let alone use an update site we have stopped using for more than a year.

The latter means that installing the new version of Akeeba Backup (5.5.2) by uploading the ZIP file didn't install the update site on your Joomla! installation. This can mean only one thing: something is broken with Joomla! itself on your site. This could be anything from an error in the #__assets table to the #__extensions or the #__update_sites tables being corrupt. None of these has anything to do with our software. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with generic Joomla! support :(

If you want me, I can take a look and at least tell you what I think is going on so that you can narrow down the issue. In this case please file a new private ticket, reference in it "ticket number #28328" and give me access info to your site (Super User and FTP). I will take a quick look around and tell you what I suspect it's going on.

Thank you for the access to your site. The problem is actually a database issue. The table #__update_sites no longer has an automatically increasing ID. As a result, whenever Akeeba Backup and Admin Tools try to refresh their update sites they overwrite each other's update site record. This happens because they try to insert a new record with ID 0 which normally causes MySQL to give a new non-zero ID. Since the auto-increment property in the ID column is missing on your site this doesn't happen.

One way to fix this is to remove the #__update_sites and #__updates tables from your database and then go to Extensions, Manage, Database and click on the Fix button. Alternatively you could install these two tables manually. Afterwards you need to go to Extensions, Manage, Update Sites and click the Rebuild button.

Thank you very much for your kind words! I am glad I could help you :)