Restore Joomla 4 Manually

This post has info on manually restoring a Joomla 4.3.4 set-up across two servers. While both are Linux systems the configuration differ slightly including the OS, Php , DB, etc. Various issues were faced & overcome in doing the restoration.

Background info:

- Source:
Ubuntu 22.04, Php 8.2, Joomla 4.3.4, Apache, Maria DB, Addon Plugins (AddToAny, LazyDb, Komento, SexyPolling)

- Destination:
Ubuntu 20.04, Php 7.4, Joomla 4.3.4, Apache, MySql 8.0

- Latest DB dump & htdocs folder (including all files, modules, plugins, media, images etc.) from Source was transferred to Destination server via Ftp before hand.

Steps:

1) DB Import

    1.1) Create user, db, grant all permission to user. 

    1.2) Import data to the created db from the latest DB dump of the source.
 
        1.2.1) ERROR 1366 (HY000) at line 2273: Incorrect integer value: '' for column 'checked_out' at row 1. Solution is to set NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION & then import:

            SET @@GLOBAL.sql_mode= 'NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION';

    1.3) ERROR 1101 (42000) at line 10692: BLOB, TEXT, GEOMETRY or JSON column 'country' can't have a default value

        - Using the solution found online & the DB dump sql import script was changed to set DEFAULT values for the problematic text columns country, city, etc
    

         // Modify the sexypolling plugin CREATE TABLE script:
            CREATE TABLE `#_sexy_votes` (
              `id_vote` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
                  ....
              `country` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `city` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `region` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `countrycode` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              PRIMARY KEY (`id_vote`),
                  .....

            ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb3 COLLATE=utf8mb3_general_ci;

2) Download Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.zip from joomla.org
    2.1) Unzip Joomla_4.3.4-Stable-Full_Package.zip to /var/www/html & rename folder to <site_name>

    2.2) Set up site configuration.php (/var/www/html/<site_name>/configuration.php)
        - Add db, username, password
        - Add tmp_path & log_path in

        public $log_path = '/var/www/html/<site_name>/administrator/logs';
          public $tmp_path = '/var/www/html/<site_name>/tmp';

3) Restore Joomla modules, plugins, languages, etc from file system Ftp backup location of Source.

4) Additional system settings on Destination

    4.1) Add missing Php modules: "Call to undefined function" error

        4.1.1) simplexml_load_file()
            sudo apt-get install php7.4-xml

        4.1.2) "IntlTimeZone" module missing
            sudo apt-get install php7.4-intl

    4.2) Increase Php upload limit (/etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini)

          post_max_size = 38M
            upload_max_filesize = 32M

    4.3) Restart apache
          sudo systemctl reload apache2
 

5) Recovering from J4 Red Error Page of death

    5.1) Redirection to installation/index.php:

    - With an error "500 - Whoops, looks like something went wrong".
    - Needed to delete the installation folder, to stop the redirection.

    5.2) Next, 404 Component not found error on the home page: 
 

    ---
        404 **Component not found.**

        Call stack
        #     Function     Location
        1     ()     JROOT/libraries/src/Component/ComponentHelper.php:296
        2     Joomla\CMS\Component\ComponentHelper::renderComponent()     JROOT/libraries/src/Application/SiteApplication.php:210
        3     Joomla\CMS\Application\SiteApplication->dispatch()     JROOT/libraries/src/Application/SiteApplication.php:251
        4     Joomla\CMS\Application\SiteApplication->doExecute()     JROOT/libraries/src/Application/CMSApplication.php:293
        5     Joomla\CMS\Application\CMSApplication->execute()     JROOT/includes/app.php:61
        6     require_once()     JROOT/index.php:32
    ---
 

    5.3) Checked DB connections using a custom php script:

No issues connecting to DB with username/ password!

    5.4) Enable Debugging/ Logging:
        

        5.4.1) Logging in php.ini (/etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini)
            ----Turn on logging-----
               display_errors = On
               html_errors = On
               display_startup_errors = On
               log_errors = On
               error_log = /var/log/apache2/php_errors.log

        5.4.2) Logging in configuration.php (/var/www/html/<site_name>/configuration.php)
            // Change to true from false
                public $debug = true;
                public $debug_lang = true;

                // Change to 'maximum' from 'default'
                public $error_reporting = 'maximum';
    
                // Change to 1 from 0
                public $log_everything = 1;

    With those J! Info started showing up in the browser along with the error stack trace & queries.

    5.5) Root cause analysis

        5.5.1) Checked the specific php libraries:
            libraries/src/Component/ComponentHelper.php:296
            libraries/src/Application/SiteApplication.php:210, etc..

    - Using var_dump($component), on SiteApplication.php:210 found: 

           $component = NULL

        - The same '$component = "com_content"' on the home page of a default Joomla application (unzip Joomla 4.3.4 zip & install & check value on Joomla home page).

        - Test with hard coded $component = "com_content" in libraries/src/Application/SiteApplication.php:210

                if(empty($component)){
                     $component = "com_content";
                }

        - With this 404 was gone & a broken site home page came up with a few Category links listed out

        - Clicking on Category link was showing that "No Article linked to Category", despite there being several Articles imported from source db dump.

        5.5.2) Localizing issue with Content/ Article loading:
        - Hit the direct Article url:
            http://<site_name>/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=<article_id>

        - This gave another error"404 Article not found", though the specific <article_id> was present in the database.

        - J! Info provided the corresponding php file and db query used to fetch article by id which was giving no result

    5.5.3) Issue with imports of all "datetime DEFAULT NULL" fields

    - On exploring the query further, it was seen to have checks for publish_up & publish_down dates. These needed to be either NULL or set to a date earlier (/later) than date NOW for publish_up (/publish_down).

    - In the "#_content" table publish_up & publish_down dates values were showing as "0000-00-00 00:00:00" (i.e. were imported as 0) in place of NULL.
This was causing all records being filtered out.

    - It also meant that wherever the "datetime default NULL" fields were imported the same issue was happening. 

        - A check revealed 30 other J! tables with the same issue.
 
        - Prepared a script to update each of these datetime fields to NULL in the 30 tables.
            UPDATE `#_content` SET `checked_out_time` = NULL, `publish_up` = NULL, `publish_down` = NULL;

            UPDATE `#_categories` SET `checked_out_time` = NULL;
                                                                     .... for all the affected tables!

With that the issue was resolved & site home page became functional!

Sexy Polling Reloaded Extension (Plugin) on J4 with MySql 8

For anyone installing the plugin SexyPolling 4.1.7 on a Joomla 4.3.4 with a MySql 8.0 db on an Ubuntu system there may be issues with default value for Text fields. More specifically error in setting default value for country, city, etc TEXT fields:

    "BLOB, TEXT, GEOMETRY or JSON column 'country' can't have a default value"

1) There is a solution for MySql 8.0 to set DEFAULT values for TEXT fields. The CREATE statement for table `#_sexy_votes` needs to be changed to:

         // Modify the sexypolling plugin CREATE TABLE script:
            CREATE TABLE `#_sexy_votes` (
              `id_vote` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
                  ....
              `country` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `city` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `region` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              `countrycode` text NOT NULL DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown'),
              PRIMARY KEY (`id_vote`),
                  .....
            ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb3 COLLATE=utf8mb3_general_ci;

Further, in order for the CREATE table changes to take effect & not get dropped/ altered, a few of the plugin's installer scripts needs to be modified. The installation then needs to be done from a folder (or a modified zip file) in which the modified plugin installer scripts are present (instead of the downloaded joomla_plugin_sexypolling_reloaded_v4.1.7.zip file), as explained next.

2) Installation of plugin from /tmp folder 

2.1) Unzip the downloaded joomla_plugin_sexypolling_reloaded_v4.1.7.zip file to the site /tmp folder as mentioned in the site configuration.php file (e.g. /var/www/html/<site_name>/tmp). Give the folder proper read/write permissions.

2.2) Change CREATE TABLE `#_sexy_votes` command  in /tmp/com_sexypolling/admin/install/sql/install.sql:

Set the DEFAULT value for country, city, region, countrycode to  "DEFAULT (_utf8mb4'Unknown')" as mentioned above.
 
2.3) Remove ALTER TABLE `#_sexy_votes` command from /tmp/com_sexypolling/scriptfile.php. 

     Put an invalid condition check on line 235 of the script to stop ALTER TABLE for `#_sexy_votes` to run:

         $alterSexyVotes=false;

         if($alterSexyVotes && is_array($columns_titles)) { 

            ...

2.4) Finally, install:

• Option A: Install from modified com_sexypolling folder: Install the extension from the folder /tmp/com_sexypolling from the J! "Admin" > "System" > "Install Extensions" > "Install from Folder" page.

• Option B: Zip & Install modified com_sexypolling folder: Another option could be to manually zip the folder with the modifications (/tmp/com_sexypolling) & install using this zip file from the standard J! "Admin" > "System" > "Install Extensions" > "Upload Package File" page.

 

Php Script To Display Process, Vmstat, Disk Usage, Syslog Of A Linux Server Via A Browser

A Php script that executes some standard shell programs for monitoring resource utilization & processes on a given Linux box. The script directs the output to a web-browser.

Apache web-server should be installed on the server.  To run copy the script to the  DocumentRoot (/var/www/html). Appropriate execute rights (-rw-x) need to be given to the apache user (which runs this script, but is not the owner) to execute this Php file & to be able to access /var/log/syslog.

Save this file as: showHealth.php in the /var/www/html folder:

Mocking AWS ELB Behaviour Locally For Testing

Once hosted out of Amazon, you make use of the AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) for balancing load across your EC2's within or acroos Availability Zones (AZ). Since code gets developed and tested locally (outside of Amazon), at times you might want to test load balancer scenarios before deploying to production. Here's one way to mock up the load balancer behaviour for local testing.

Use Apache (you could very well use something like Nginx instead) in a reverse proxy, load balancer set up via mod_proxy & mod_proxy_balancer.  Fairly simple for anyone with slight experience with configuring Apache. We used Apache as a load balancer front-end to IIS on local, exactly the way ELB would load balance in front of production IIS.

Additionally, since ELB was also an SSL end point for our production servers, we set up Apache to be the SSL end point (via mod_ssl) on local. Apache was configured to listen on port 443 (using a self-signed certificate), and would forward all traffic from port 443 to backend IIS on port 80.

Once we had that set-up going, we were quickly able to reproduce an issue with application generated Secure cookies not getting set properly across client request/ response. Once we had the fix on the local (which was to set the flag on the cookies in the request, not response) the same worked flawlessly on the AWS as well.