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Site Restoration

#13347 Can't login a restored site

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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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 Wednesday, 22 August 2012 07:16 CDT

user48160
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: 2.5.1
PHP version: 5.3.8
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: ix web hosting
Akeeba Backup version which took the backup: 3.6.2
Kickstart version used to extract the backup: 3.5.2

Description of my issue:
I try to restore a Joomla site from WAMP on a live server. The restore works fine when I do it on WAMP. But on the live server I have the following issues:

1- I can't log in. The administrator/index.php shows the login screen, when I fill the credentials in, I get a blank screen.
2- Many of the images do not show up on the live server.

Again, when I do a dry install in WAMP, it works like a charm. But not going live. Can you tell me what I do wrong?

Thanks,

Jos Flachs

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Regarding the second problem, it is a little ambiguous. If you are talking about the template's images (i.e. the styling doesn't load) then please read this troubleshooting article. If you're talking about images in articles, please check the URLs of the images. Most likely you were developing your site in a subdirectory and now all articles have the subdirectory's name hardcoded in the image URL. In this case you can use Admin Tools Core's SEO & Link Tools to automatically fix them on the fly.

Regarding the first issue, now. A white page or a page with a 500 Internal Server Error is, in fact, either a .htaccess issue to a PHP fatal error in disguise.

First, let's see if it is a .htaccess issue. Try renaming the .htaccess file in your site's root to htaccess.bak If there is a .htaccess file in the site's administrator directory, try renaming it as well. If that solves the problem, the issue was with a directive in your .htaccess file. We'd like to recommend you to try removing directives from your .htaccess until you find the one which causes the problem.

If that doesn't help, the error you are receiving is in fact a PHP error in disguise. First, check your server's error logs (not the access logs) immediately after visiting the page which throws the error. There should be an exact description of the PHP fatal error which occurred. Sometimes you can find the error messages in files called error_log or error.log inside the site's root and/or administrator directories. If unsure about the error log location, please consult your host. Most likely the error logs are available in your site's cPanel, Plesk control panel or similar hosting account management facility.

If your host does not give you access to the error logs and you have access to the Joomla! administrator area, please log in to your site's back-end, go to Global Configuration, click on the Server tab and set the Error Reporting to Maximum (Joomla! 1.5) or Development (Joomla! 2.x and later). Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a blank page, edit your configuration.php file and put the following code right after the final closing curly brace ( this is what a curly brace looks like --> } ) but before the closing PHP tag (it looks like ?> that is a question mark and a greater-than sign):
ini_set( 'display_errors', true );
error_reporting( E_ALL ); 
Try visiting the problem page again.

If you still get a white page, please remote the two lines from your configuration.php file. Edit the .htaccess file in your site's root. If you don't have a file named .htaccess create a new one. Beware that htaccess.txt is a DIFFERENT FILE and will NOT work! Add the following to the end of the file:
php_flag display_errors On
php_value error_reporting 32767
and retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, remove the two lines from your .htaccess file. Now, create a file called php.ini with the following content:
display_errors=on
error_reporting=E_ALL
and upload it into your site's root and your site's administrator directory. Retry loading the problem page.

If you still get a white page, delete the php.ini files your created and choose a different host. If your host doesn't allow you to debug any PHP-related issues there is no point paying them.

Please note that if you can not understand what the PHP error message means, just copy and paste it here verbatim so that we can take a look and point you to the right direction.

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!

user48160
Here's the error message:
Fatal error: Call to a member function login() on a non-object in /xxx/local/home/yyy/site.com/administrator/components/com_login/admin.login.php on line 64

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
It looks like you tried restoring a Joomla! 2.5 site on top of an existing Joomla! 1.x site. This won't work. You have to remove the old site's files and then restore your backup. Otherwise, the leftover files from the 1.x installation cause the problem you mentioned.

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!

user48160
Yes, with a bit of help from the ISP I got there, just before you did. Both of you thank you very much for the fast replies! The site is now up and running again.

I deleted everything and did a fresh install with the backup I had, now it worked like a charm.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You're welcome!

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!

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