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Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? YES
Have I searched the tickets before posting? YES
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? YES
Joomla! version: 2.5.14
PHP version: 5.3.27
MySQL version: 5.5.31
Host: strato.de
Akeeba Backup version: Professional 3.8.1 (2013-09-10)

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Please attach a ZIP file containing your Akeeba Backup log file in order for us to help you with any backup or restoration issue. If the file is over 2Mb, please upload it on your server and post a link to it.

Description of my issue: (german, sorry if my english is not that good)
We used the free AB-version before and bought the pro version some days ago to automate the backup-process using a cron job. The manual backup works fine without any problems, the size of the backup .jpa is about 28MB. The automated backup was successful 2 times but then failed saying
"[date time] Akeeba Engine has timed out
[date time] Akeeba Backup has timed out. Please read the documentation."
I tried to change the parameters 20-30 times, i called the provider, i ran the configuration script again, i excluded directories and files that were last added to archive, but still having no success.
The config script set the values for min.execution time to 2s, max.exec.time to 7s and the "run-time-bias" to 75%. I changed that values from 2/15/50 to 2/120/10 an in betweeen - no success.
An Hour ago i changed the min.execution time to 1s an the backup was successful but some minutes ago with the same settings it failed again.
Please help, i'm becoming desperate..

Thank you very much for that fast reply!!

I changed the values as you described but the backup failed again.
But there's one difference: the notification mail the server sent was always about 10kb when the backup failed, and about 13kb when the backup was successful, now with the new settings the notification mail was about 45kb.

You wrote
"...consuming too much CPU on the server.."
the server sends a notification-mail after the cronjob is done (attached) saying the "memory used" is about 5-6mb and the phpinfo() says the "memory_limit =104M", so can this really be the reason???
When the backup was successful the notification mail ends with:
"Backup job finished successfully after approximately 3 minutes
Peak memory usage: 7.75 Mb"
I attached the latest backup-log and 2 notification mails, can you give me another hint?

Thank you so far,
martin

Hi Nicholas,
thank you again for your fast response!!
I will call the provider tomorrow and see if he can increase that limitation!!
best regards,
martin

Hi Nicholas,
I think the problem is solved now. I called the provider today and he told me the max_execution_time is limited to 2 minutes and can't be increased. But there is another limitation: the server has a limit of handling files bigger than 30 MB, and after searching the troubleshooter again I found out how to split the backup in several parts. This option is a little bit hidden, I didn't have a look at the config options of the "akeeba.advanced.archiver_engine" before. So I set the "common.part_size_custom" to 25 MB and the backup was successful! I don't really understand why it failed before cause the backup file was only about 28 MB when starting the backup manually, but in the end it doesn't matter.
I'll have to test the restoring of the site with this "backup in parts" now but I'm very confident that this problem is solved.
Thank you for your fast help,
Martin