Support

Site Restoration

#19761 Invalid header in archive file, part 0, offset 636806019

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
n/a
Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Saturday, 05 April 2014 03:36 CDT

arkofhope
 I backed up our site arkofhopeforchildren.org, downloaded it as a binary, and u[loaded it via FTP to a brand new test environment I created where we wiln install AdminTools Pro. The extracction hangs and I have tried numerous solutions that were mentioned but none change the results. Please note we did the same on 2 other sites in vacking up to create test environment sites for AdminTools and they worked great. Those solutons I have tried are;

"As a rule of thumb, you need about 2.5 times as much disk space as your backup archive. " We have 80 GB of space available and less than 50% is used

"If you are on a Linux machine, change the permissions of the root of your to-be-restored website to 0777" I tried this but got a 500 error. the only way the error would go away is to revert back to 755

"One workaround is to edit your php.ini file and set the max_execution_time=120, then restart your server." Our max_execution_time is already set to 300 for another program used for a different site (JomSocial)

Help?
Blair Corbett

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Your problem is that your backup archive is corrupt. Reading the backup log (more on that later) I can see that your backup archive is corrupt because you are backing up server error logs whose size changes during the backup. These are:

administrator/components/com_joomlaupdate/error_log
administrator/components/com_mijosef/library/error_log
administrator/components/com_mijosef/library/autocompleters/error_log
templates/atomic/error_log
templates/beez_20/error_log
templates/beez5/error_log
plugins/system/rokupdater/error_log
components/com_joomforce/captcha/error_log
components/com_roksprocket/layouts/strips/themes/default/error_log

I would suggest creating a regex filter to exclude them from the backup. Go to Akeeba Backup and click on Regex Files and Directories Exclusion. Add a new filter of type "Exclude file" with the following Filter Item definition (copy it verbatim):
#error_log$#

Moreover I see that you have a huge log file in Joomla17/logs/rokcommon.php (size: 542 Mb!!!!). You do not need to and must not back this up. I would suggest deleting it, or at the very least use Files and Directories Exclusion to remove it from the backup. The same applies for Joomla17/logs/error.php (another 36 Mb of useless data).

Now retry backing up. Your backup archive will be significantly smaller, most likely around 10-20Mb (as it's not backing up the useless, big and problematic error logs) and should restore just fine.

Pro tips or how I know how to help you:
  • Search the backup log file for error_log These are PHP error log files that should not be backed up and can be safely excluded from backup. The thing with error logs is that they can change size during the backup process. Most often this leads to a corrupt backup archive. That's what happened in your case.
  • Search the backup log for the phrase Breaking step _before_ large file. This will let you know which are the really big files (over 10Mb) being backed up. It is followed by the path to the file and its size in bytes. If the file/directory name contains log, logs or error you can be pretty sure you should not be backing it up as it's an error log. If you see a .jpa, .jps, .zip, .j01/.j02 etc or .z01/.z02 etc files you know that you are backing up old backup archives, which should be avoided (unless you like bloated backups that are very hard to handle).


Really, that's all the "magic" I used to help you out and now you know how to deal with these issues too.

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!

arkofhope
I did the two recommended steps exactly as instructed and got closer but something is still too wrong for me to proceed. For the site administration page I get a blank page, and for the front of the sandbox site I get more of a sitemap list (picture attached) with no template at all.

I am attaching a new log.

I followed the steps below exactly the second time, and the first time I tried exculding the entire Jomla17 folder. Both resulted in exactly the same results.

"Go to Akeeba Backup and click on Regex Files and Directories Exclusion. Add a new filter of type "Exclude file" with the following Filter Item definition (copy it verbatim):
#error_log$#"

"Moreover I see that you have a huge log file in Joomla17/logs/rokcommon.php (size: 542 Mb!!!!). You do not need to and must not back this up. I would suggest deleting it, or at the very least use Files and Directories Exclusion to remove it from the backup. The same applies for Joomla17/logs/error.php (another 36 Mb of useless data)."

Thank you for your guidance.
Blair

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Your backup and restoration worked just fine. Please consult https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter/prbasicts.html for instructions on solving the issues with the restored site. Most likely issues are what are mentioned under "If your site was using Admin Tools' .htaccess Maker" and "The $live_site variable in configuration.php".

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!