Support

Site Restoration

#27026 Site Transfer

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 bluetongue1 on Tuesday, 07 February 2017 17:08 CST

bluetongue1
Hi,

I am performing a site transfer. All good until I get to the Akeeba Kickstart Core rev58D7C90 page.

I am getting error

An error occured

Wrong FTP initial directory - the directory doesn't exist

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You have entered the wrong information for your FTP connection. Please refer to this page: https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/troubleshooter/kscantextract.html

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!

bluetongue1
Thanks for that. I have gone past that but am now stuck in Angie. Am I supposed to use the data base and user details I have created in the new site or the old sites data base and user details

bluetongue1
HTTP Request Error
HTTP Status: 500 (Internal Server Error)
Internal status: error
XHR ReadyState: 4
Raw server response:
Error displaying the error page: Application Instantiation Error: Could not connect to MySQL.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
You need to enter the database details for the site you are restoring to (new site).

Try to reason about it logically. During the restoration we don't know and we don't need to care about your old site. The old site is backed up and everything we could take from there is inside the backup archive. Moreover, the old site's database connection information wouldn't work on the new server since, by definition, this is a new server with different database users. As a result the old site's database connection information would be useless.

However, you are trying to restore the database contents on the new site. How would you do that if you never put the new server's connection information somewhere? There's no way to find out that information automatically for obvious security reasons (otherwise a hacker would simply connect to your site's database server, pull out this information and then hack your site - it'd be like leaving your key taped on the front door of your house). So it stands to reason that the database connection information requested is for the new site.

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!

bluetongue1
OK then. Well something has gone wrong as I now get this and I mistakenly left the Angie page. i could not get past the database detailswww.koomurri.com.au HTTP Request Error
HTTP Status: 500 (Internal Server Error)
Internal status: error
XHR ReadyState: 4
Raw server response:
Error displaying the error page: Application Instantiation Error: Could not connect to MySQL.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager
Please try extracting the backup archive again and redo the restoration. At the end of the restoration with ANGIE pay VERY close attention to what is written on your screen. My educated guess is that it tells you that it can't write to the configuration.php file and gives you instructions how to do it manually. If you do not carry out these instructions (like last time) your restored site will indeed NOT know how to connect to the new server's database and will NOT work, throwing the error message you pasted above.

How do I know that without seeing your screen? Well, I can deduce that from the information you gave me on this ticket :) Follow me to understand what is going on here.

You are using FTP in Kickstart which means that all your site's files are owned by the FTP user. Being on a share host, this means that they are unwriteable by the different user the web server is running under. If you want to understand what I'm saying and why it happens please read the How your web server works chapter in our documentation. The last 10 years it's helped lots of people understand the source of baffling issues with their sites - which have nothing to do with our software to begin with.

Now, the very last step of ANGIE tries to write the new configuration.php file. That's where Joomla looks to figure out how to connect to the database. However, because the file is owned by the FTP user and ANGIE is running inside the web server which runs under a different user the end result is that ANGIE cannot write to the configuration.php file. It detects that problem and tells you what to do. Since you didn't do that (probably you closed the window without reading that information out of habit) the old site's configuration.php file is still present, with the old site's database connection information. So whenever you try to load Joomla it fails to connect to the database (since the connection information is wrong) and throws the error message "Application Instantiation Error: Could not connect to MySQL".

But you are trying to run ANGIE again, so why does that keep happening? Because you've deleted the installation directory which is where ANGIE used to live. Now every time you try to access /installation the web server can't find the directory and Joomla kicks in. Hence the error message when you're trying to access ANGIE: the message does NOT come from ANGIE, it comes from Joomla because ANGIE no longer exists and the restoration wasn't completed.

Conversely you might wonder why ANGIE appears if the installation directory is present and you try to access any page in your site's frontend or administrator backend. That's actually a feature baked into Joomla. When it detects that a directory called "installation" is present it will refuse to run and redirect your browser to /installation/index.php. This is the magic which allows you to install Joomla in the first place.

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!

bluetongue1
Worked a treat by the way. Thank you for the explanation

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