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Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#32497 Doing a 'Clean' restoration with Kickstart

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Akeeba Backup version
n/a

Latest post by Nuthatch on Thursday, 20 February 2020 04:17 CST

Nuthatch
Hello Akeeba Team

Description of my issue:

I had some errors after installing sh404SEF, OSMap and Akeeba Backup Pro. The problems were around the first 2 add-ons so I restored my site to the previous working version and tried again.

I am aware that Akeeba Backup restoration does not delete any files not present in the backup. These remnants presumably caused my next problem.

After re-installing sh404SEF ig got the error "sh404SEF requires the shLib system plugin to be enabled, but you appear to have disabled it. Please enable it again!"

I am now unable to access any part of my backend Admin panel using the top menu bar. It is totally unresponsive. I therefore cannot use my new Akeeba Backup Professional since I cannot access it.

I am happy to do another restore using my backup file and Kickstart but this will still leave fragments of the faulty installation behind. It would seem to me (relative novice) that I need to delete all the files and the php database and do a 'clean restoration' from my backup. Is this a good plan or a potential disaster?

I will also contact the sh404SEF and OSMap teams to see if they can tell me how to remove all traces of their software but would appreciate your advice about my clean restoration idea please.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You have the right idea. That's what I would do.

Before you do anything, though, make sure you have a copy of your backup archives and a copy of the copy as well. Ideally these copies should be stored on separate media, e.g. one copy on your computer and one on a removable drive that won't be plugged into the computer when you start working. This reduces the likelihood of losing your only copy of your site's latest backup.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Nuthatch
Thank you Nicholas.

I took the plunge and did a full restore with deletion of existing files and dropping the database using a recent backup and Kickstart Professional.

The good news is that the front end appears fine and the backend is no longer frozen.

However, after making a few basic change to .htaccess and a template php file I thought I'd do another backup before trying any of the plugins that may have caused my intial problems. Clicking backup now in Akeeba Backup Core did nothing and neither did trying the configuration wizard (screen showing "Benchmarking in Progress" unchanged after 30+ minutes). I therefore installed my newly purchased Akeeba Backup Pro but exactly the same thing happened.

My host is One.com and I know that I have to make changes to Akeeba Backup Configuration but this is after the Configuration Wizard has finshed.

One other observation which may well be unrelated is the Joomla Control Panel shows, under maintenance "Unknown Joomla" and "Unknown Extensions" where previously it would show "Joomla is up to date" or "Udtaes are available". Clicking on Joomla Update - Upload and Update shows "The PHP temporary folder is not set."

I also, rather alarmingly, have completeley empty Article Contents if I try to edit articles. This despite the pages still looking fine on the front end.

Can you offer any further suggestions please?

Best wishes

Mike

PHP currently 7.3.15

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
What you describe is that JavaScript does not execute at all on your site, at least in the backend.

Do a quick test. Edit your user profile and change the editor to None. Try to edit an article. Do you see the article contents as plain HTML code? If you do, change your editor in your user profile to CodeMirror and edit the same article. If the HTML does not appear formatted (and most likely not appear at all) you have a JavaScript issue.

The first thing I'd check is the obvious. Check that JavaScript is enabled on your browser. If you are using browser extensions such as ad blockers, NoScript etc try disabling them for your site. If you are using a firewall / antivirus check if it has options which might be screwing up JavaScript on your site. For example, AVG comes with a "link checker" feature which ends up throwing JavaScript errors and breaks sites when you visit them.

if that didn't help you need to check the browser's console for any errors which would tell you if there is a JavaScript error – perhaps because of a misbehaving plugin – in your backend pages.

Without having information from the browser console I'm reluctant to offer any further advice. I can think of a few things that could have gone wrong (HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www disparity between the site being accessed and how things are configured in .htaccess and Global Configuration, permissions, an errant .htaccess file somewhere etc) but I don't want to speculate wildly.

For what it's worth, you seem to have been having a similar problem before restoring your site. You had said this:
I am now unable to access any part of my backend Admin panel using the top menu bar. It is totally unresponsive. I therefore cannot use my new Akeeba Backup Professional since I cannot access it.

The top menu bar is actually a bog standard Bootstrap drop-down menu rendered using JavaScript. If JavaScript is dead on the page (either doesn't execute at all or stopped executing because a plugin threw an error) you would indeed lose access to the menu. If the problem is a misbehaving third party plugin, the plugin order determines how early its misbehaving code that throws a JavaScript error is parsed by your browser which could have the effect of some bits working and others not at all. So if I were to take a wild guess I'd say that the browser console will show a JavaScript error in index.php and when you look at the referenced line you'll see it comes from a block of code (typically right above the referenced line) produced by a third party plugin in Joomla.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Nuthatch
Thanks Nicolas.

Impressively fast response.

Your second paragraph showed responses as you suggested though I could see text in CodeMirror.

A clue in your 5th paragraph "...www/non-www disparity..." led me to amend my .htaccess file and comment out:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.barnlake.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://barnlake.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I can now see the articles in the backend. Also my backup is now running as expected.

I am using Firefox Version 73.0.1 (64-bit) and an extension "Javascript Switcher" shows that Javascript is active when I'm in the Joomla backend. I also have another test site with the Barnlake data on it (but not the amended .htaccess since it is not a live site) - this works perfectly with the same browser suggesting that Javascript is not the problem. I can now also access the top menu bar in the restored Joomla Backend. Nothing has changed on my browser around the time of my original problems and the site restoration.

Thanks so far.

I'm just left with "... Joomla Control Panel shows, under maintenance "Unknown Joomla" and "Unknown Extensions" where previously it would show "Joomla is up to date" or "Udtaes are available". Clicking on Joomla Update - Upload and Update shows "The PHP temporary folder is not set."

Best wishes

Mike







nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Check your configuration.php file. What does the line with public $live_site read? Ideally it should be
public $live_site = '';

If you've entered your site's URL there: remove it. Joomla is not WordPress, it doesn't need to know the URL to your site. It receives this information from the web server. Putting your site's URL in there will cause problems if you have HTTP to HTTPS or non-www to www (or vice versa...) redirections. One of the immediate symptoms is that the JavaScript stops working because modern browsers consider it a cross-site request to load a JavaScript file, disabled by default for security reasons.

And no, you are not going crazy. This did start happening "suddenly", as much as I hate the term in the context of problem manifestation. The last few months browsers have gotten far more restrictive regarding loading cross-site JavaScript files because of major security concerns about this practice. A site that was misconfigured would be working last year with an older version of the same browser but now it no longer works.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Nuthatch
Thank you once again Nicholas.

Problem solved by editing configuration.php as you suggested.

Just in case anyone else has the same problems I should point out that in an earlier step when I amended my .htaccess file and commented out:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.barnlake.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://barnlake.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I then found another suggestion on One.com's site to force the use of non-www URLs.
Adding the following to my .htaccess file worked and did not reproduce the original problems:

#Rewrite to domain without www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%1/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]

Once again my thanks for such a speedy set of responses. Site restored and problems fixed all in the same day.

I'm very grateful

Best wishes

Mike

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

If I may, I can tell you why the alternative code worked. See how it uses https:// instead of http://. That's the trick.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

πŸ‡¬πŸ‡·Greek: native πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§English: excellent πŸ‡«πŸ‡·French: basic β€’ πŸ• My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Nuthatch
Whoops! I missed that.

I set this site up in 2014 and it changes very slowly. It has been an interesting and informative time trying to bring it up to date again.

Cheers and thanks again.

Mikee

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