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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:


Hi,

I have excluded some dir / folders but I believe they have been backed up.

My backup is 1.2 GB when it should only be 170MB

Any ideas?

Thanks

Eddie

If you look at the log file, you can see that all of the excluded directories are skipped.

You do have an 18 Mb video file that you are including in the backup. That is the only file flagged in the log as a large file.

Hi,

I should only have one small video file. The larger video files is in the excluded dir

I think the phoca gallery images have been backed up when I excluded it

Eddie

Right, one mp4 file, /files/videos/hyde_crash.mp4.

I can't be much help because I can't see the file sizes in the log file. There are a couple of zip files, but they don't look like problems. There are no backup files that I can see begin included in the backup. There are a bunch of files in your /documents folder, but I can't see how big they are.

Nothing jumps out at me as being out of place.

Hi,

Anyone else have some suggestions as I cant backup at all.

Eddie

Hi,

Here we go:

I have managed to get the backup going and created more exclusions, but my backup is still 1.2 GB

See attachments, one is log file, one i backup sizes when it should only be 170MB and the other is the list of exclusions.

Eddie

Eddie,

Your backup is successful. Your exclusions are being excluded. (Once you exclude the Directory, it is not necessary to also exclude the sub-folders and files of that directory.) You can search for the directory name in the log file and see that those directories are being skipped.

I'm not sure why you thing the backup is too large. You have 23,000+ records in your _acymailing_userstats table (see line 1264 in the log), you have 107,000+ records in your _redirect_links table (line 2676), you have a bunch of extensions installed, this is not a small site.

You have a bunch of files in your /media folder and a bunch in you /documents folder, but I can't see how big they are. If you want to know what is taking up room in the archive, you can extract it to a local computer using the eXtract Wizard (available on our downloads page) and take a look at it that way. That is probably easier than via ftp.

Hi Dale,

Maybe this will help.

I have a dev server which host our dev site. On the live site I have 2 dir for Joomla. One dir hosts the original site 2.5 and the other dir is for 3.2.4

Whichever site is active, currently 3.2.4 - I move all the Joomla files out of that dir into root dir. So in the 2.5 dir, I have a full working site just running on 2.5, but just there as a standby if anything major happens with 3.2.4

I have excluded images/phocagallery but when the backup ran, it was saying it was backing those images up which is massive size.

The reason I say the site should be about 170MB, is that when I backed it up on the dev site, and excluded dir and files with Akeeba 3.8.2 the size is only 170MB - image attached. This site has been moved to the live server and I am using the same exclusion, just added not to back up dir 2.5, you will then see the size in the attached image. This site is using the latest version of Akeeba. These are replica sites as of a week ago.

Just had a quick look at ACYmailing detailed stats and they are both the same size in dev and live

Hope this helps

Eddie

I have a copy of the dev site and live site exclusion lists attached

Eddie

OK, I understand a little better about where your expectations are coming from.

Take a look at /media/com_phocagallery/. I think that's what you are seeing being backed up. The /images/com_phocagallery/ is being skipped. The site I used Phoca Gallery on I took down in 2011, so you're testing my memory. I recall it saving the images in several different sizes and optionally saving the original. I'm thinking the original images are in /images and the "thumbnails" are in /media.

Thanks for that, but the size of the backup is now biggest concern?

It wont allow us to back the site up, it says to many tables or something to that affect.

I now have got no idea where to go and what to do next to get the size on the live site down.

Eddie

"Too many tables" and "too big" are two completely different things. The log you posted was from a successful backup. There are no errors or warnings and no indication that all of the tables were not backed up.

What is the exact error message that you are getting?

Hi Dale,

Sorry, BUT my question has still not been answered. Why is my backup size on the live site that large when they are virtually identical sites.

I have put all the exclusions on that's needed, and by backup is about 8X bigger on the live site than the dev site.

Both sites are running Joomla 3.2.4

The only difference is Akeeba, dev site is 3.8.2 and live site is the latest.

You mentioned: "Too many tables" and "too big" are two completely different things. The log you posted was from a successful backup.

Thats right, the log was from a successful backup, but after that it failed at 74%. Looking at the analysis report it suggests we're backing up too many tables plus some very big files.

If need be I can provide login details and someone can have a look for themselves on whats happening.

Eddie

HI Dale,

I will do a fresh install of Akeeba, and restore the site from dev via kickstart and do the tests again.

Eddie

Eddie,

I found a possible problem. It looks like there are a number of error log files being included in your backup. This is bad because it takes up space, but it can cause real problems if the error logs change size while they are being backed up. In a worst case scenario this can cause the backup to fail or the archive to be corrupt.

From a combined ticket from Nicholas and Davide last week:

There is a Zen approach to solving this problem. Go to "RegEx Files and Folders Exclusion" and create a new filter of type "Exclude file" with the following content (one filter for each line):

#(/php_error_cpanel\.|php_error_cpanel\.|/error_)log#

This will exclude these error log files with the immediate results of backups being considerably smaller and the backup archives being valid again.

If we're still having problems after your restore, please send me a log from a failed backup, that will be more informative.