Support

Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

#32850 CRON job stopped working/Update issues

Posted in ‘Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

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

Latest post by nicholas on Wednesday, 15 April 2020 03:18 CDT

bthijs
Hello,

First of all, Akeeba is a great product and very happy user for some years now.
This is the first time that I'm a bit at a loss after multiple weeks of troubleshooting.

Until 29/02/2020 backup configuration was working normal as expected. Both manual as scheduled via Cron. As of 01/03/2020 I noticed that no scheduled backup are taken anymore. Manually taking a backup still works as expected for both my profiles (local and ftp backup). Also the automatic backup as part of updating Joomla Core is also working.
Other Cron jobs are also still working. When I run the scheduled command, I get an error as can be observed in attached image (2020-04-13_13-38-28.jpg).
Another symptom is that when I try to access the "Schedule Automatic Backups" via the control panel, I'm getting the same error concerning the Model in the browser.

In order to trying to fix the issue I decided to try to update the version. As it was also indicated by the plugin version check. Unfortunately the update is not working either. When using the wizard I get a copy file failed error. This is strange because update to 7.1.0 worked fine. Also other plugin updates operate without errors.
To solve this update issues I went over the troubleshooting steps from your documentation and none of the items worked. I even tried to upload the content of the zipfile to perform a manual update, also without success.

This all concerns a production site. I also have a local copy of the site to test updates before applying them in production. I also performed those tests this time and they worked fine. So I was a bit surprised to have "all" these production issues.

Therefor creating a ticket to get some help in solving this.

Cheers

Björn

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
The error you are receiving means that the file components/com_akeeba/Model/Backup.php is missing. This is only used for non-backend backups (front-end, CLI and JSON API). That's why your backend backup works but the frontend does. I have checked that this file is delivered with Akeeba Backup Professional but not with Akeeba Backup Core, the free version. Akeeba Backup Core 7.0 and later only support backend backups.

So, first, please check that you do have Akeeba Backup Professional installed. You can confirm it by going to Components, Akeeba Backup. Look on the right hand side for the version you have installed. It will tell you if it's Professional or Core.

The fact that you can't install an update makes me think that the entire components/com_akeeba folder (or at least some of its subfolders and files) are not writeable. You should try the instructions in akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter/abinstallation.html

If you have a specific error message please paste it here so I can help you better.

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!

bthijs
Thanks for your quick reply.
As you suggested I double checked the installed version and it states "Akeeba Backup Professional 7.1.0 (2020-03-20)" (cfr. version.jpg).

The indication of the frontend components dir gave me some more information. Up until now I was focusing on the admin/components only. So I discovered that the components/com_akeeba dir was missing the Controller and Model subdir. So this explains why the backup via the cron job is failing.
Given that you mentioned there could be a problem with the permission on the directories I created manually the "missing" subdirs and made sure all dir permissions are set to 755. Next I launched the update in the hope that updating to 7.1.3 would fix the missing files. It didn't and the error remains the same (cfr. update_error01.jpg).

So basically I guess the situation can be resumed to the fact that I have currently a partial 7.1.0 pro version installed. What would be a realistic strategy to fix this? Restoring a last working backup, would be my last resort as of course there is already quiet some change over the last month.

Finally I would be more than happy to provide a specific error message, as this is also something I have been looking for the last couple of days. Any suggestion on where to look? Or how to provoke the correct detailed log file?

Thanks for your time

Björn

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
The error you are getting seems to be coming from Joomla itself. It tells you that it cannot upload the installation package. Either your PHP maximum upload size is too low or the permissions of the folders are incorrect. Both issues can be resolved following the link I gave you in my previous reply.

Once you fix that issue you will be able to install Akeeba Backup 7.1.3. That should automatically address the problem you have with the missing folders.

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!

bthijs
The good news is that I managed to fix it. I'm not 100% sure about the root cause but I'm guessing the missing folders were somehow part of the cause.

First of all I forgot to mention that I did use your troubleshooting guide but without any luck. That was actually the main reason why I raised this ticket in the first place :-).
Anyway my upload size was not part of the solution as it was already set to "20M" for more than a year and previous akeeba updates went fine. Installing and updating other extensions worked also without any problems, the only one that was giving me a hard time was the akeeba backup.
To solve the issue, I think the creation of the missing folders was necessary with correct permissions. Probably these manual changes were not correct interpreted by Joomla because earlier today this did not change anything. So just now I restarted apache service and checked again the permissions with the admin tools. They were all set to default 755 so that seemed to be ok. To be 100% sure I performed a Fix Permissions via Admin Tools. After all these additional actions I tried update to 7.1.3 and it worked.

Thanks for your time and the ticket can be closed.

Björn

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
First of all I forgot to mention that I did use your troubleshooting guide but without any luck. That was actually the main reason why I raised this ticket in the first place :-).


Oops! That was important :)

So just now I restarted apache service and checked again the permissions with the admin tools. They were all set to default 755 so that seemed to be ok. To be 100% sure I performed a Fix Permissions via Admin Tools. After all these additional actions I tried update to 7.1.3 and it worked.


I think the most important part of these actions was restarting Apache. This makes Apache re-evaluate which user and group it runs under (therefore how 0755 permissions behave) as well as reload PHP's configuration.

For what it's worth, when I was setting up a new Windows computer (because I needed to test some stuff under IIS) I had similar problems because PHP's temporary upload folder was unwritable by the IIS user. Of course it didn't use to be unwritable; I just change the effective user the web server was using to run the site under. After a frustrating 5 minutes I checked my PHP configuration again, adjusted the permissions, restarted the server and everything worked.

I know my example is with IIS but the takeaway is that small oversights can lead to permissions issues under any OS and server combination. I've had similar problems with Apache but now I've got the experience (and a document with step by step instructions) to avoid this kind of pitfalls when I need to set up Apache afresh, e.g. when I accidentally bork my Ubuntu installation due to a failed release update :)

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!

Support Information

Working hours: We are open Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm Cyprus timezone (EET / EEST). Support is provided by the same developers writing the software, all of which live in Europe. You can still file tickets outside of our working hours, but we cannot respond to them until we're back at the office.

Support policy: We would like to kindly inform you that when using our support you have already agreed to the Support Policy which is part of our Terms of Service. Thank you for your understanding and for helping us help you!