What happened? (missing posts)

LPChip · April 19, 2006, 07:46:41

You guys deserve to know what happend (although I just found out myself

)

Appearantly they have done a hardware upgrade on the server, and for some strange reason, they replaced a backup.

As a result, all file permissions have been reset, which causes write failures. These write failures were the thing you saw.

I have restored those to not generate the errors, but I'll have to restore some others. If something doesn't work as it suppose to be, lemme know.

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 07:55:56

They seem to have used an old DB image: we have lost a couple of days of posts. Maybe lock the forums until you have restored the backup from just before the upgrade? (there had better be one - one of the missing posts was about someone wanting to give me money!

)

LPChip · April 19, 2006, 08:47:15

Quote from: "rewbs"They seem to have used an old DB image: we have lost a couple of days of posts. Maybe lock the forums until you have restored the backup from just before the upgrade? (there had better be one - one of the missing posts was about someone wanting to give me money! )

Haha

Well, there isn't one unfortunatelly.

Since this forum was ment to be temporarilly (its still ment to be

) I haven't done anything to backup.

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 09:15:07

drat.. ok then

Could you set up a job to do daily backups from now on? I imagine a zipped version of the forum DB wouldn't be more than a few MB, and they'd be no reason to keep more than say 5-10 days of backups.
It couldn't be more obvious at this stage that forum backups are necessary, no matter how temporary this place is indented to be.

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 09:17:45

By the way, who's hosting this place and what kind of agreement do you have with them? I'm pretty sure they should get into trouble if they have caused data loss due an upgrade they didn't warn you about. It would be worth at least asking them if they have a more recent backup.

speed-goddamn-focus · April 19, 2006, 09:19:40

It's a pretty strange behaviour of them to upgrade without a fresh backup anyway...

Christofori · April 19, 2006, 10:02:05

Well.. in my experience, it's not just his hosting company, either. We maintain several web servers for small business clients thru my work, each server is colocated through a different hosting company. A few of them have done the same (or very similar) things to us... fortunately we DID have backups.

It seems the "rule of updates" applies to more than just our hosting companies... they like to update without letting you know. I can't count the times one of their updates has broken some of our custom scripts.. and damaged shopping carts, bulletin boards, or other common apps. I guess it's just "how things are" and as customers we're supposed to accept it.

MisterX · April 19, 2006, 10:36:27

Seemed to be the day for problems...

The main modplug.com server fell victim to a "rolling blackout" where it was being hosted. Apparently the outage caused a failure on the main disk drive so once again, everything was lost.

I've had it with this server (it was free, and you get what you pay for), so it is being retired and I will move the site to my own server farm. This does make a large delay in the launch of the new site, however, but we will plod forward with the site being relaunched.

LPChip · April 19, 2006, 10:42:10

Quote from: "MisterX"Seemed to be the day for problems...

The main modplug.com server fell victim to a "rolling blackout" where it was being hosted. Apparently the outage caused a failure on the main disk drive so once again, everything was lost.

I've had it with this server (it was free, and you get what you pay for), so it is being retired and I will move the site to my own server farm. This does make a large delay in the launch of the new site, however, but we will plod forward with the site being relaunched.

I have several places to store websites, and this one is just not that good.

I have to find out how to schedule backups, but I'm affraid it won't be that easy, if possible at all.

The new system will be hosted on the modplug site, or if required on one of my safe servers where I can do anything.

Am not going to port this site there though. Cus I need to do lots of things to my safe servers in order to be able to host there in the first place.

The progress of the new site is still going. I have run into some problems, but nothing i couldn't handle.

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 11:06:31

Quote from: "LPChip"I have several places to store websites, and this one is just not that good.

What's the name? I still think it's worth complaining to them and asking if they have a backup.

Quote from: "LPChip"I have to find out how to schedule backups, but I'm affraid it won't be that easy, if possible at all.

Do you have shell access to the system, or can you submit cron jobs?
Here's a little bash script I use to take database dumps and keep the 10 most recent. I set it up as a cron job to run every 24h. Your host might even have something pre-written to do this.

Code Select

backupName="dbname.`date +%a.%F@%H.%M.%S`"
backupPath="/home/robinf/dbBackups"

cd $backupPath
mysqldump -ac --add-drop-table --user="userid" --password="password" dbname > $backupName.mysql
tar -czf $backupName.tgz  $backupName.mysql
rm $backupName.mysql

#remove backups older than 10 days
find $backupPath -name "dbname.*.tgz" -mtime +10 -exec rm {} \;

It wouldn't be hard to extend it to store the backups remotely or adapt it for other environments.
Keep us posted on whether you can get regular backups or not.

LPChip · April 19, 2006, 11:09:31

I don't have cronjobs nor shell access. Thats the problem...

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 11:12:59

What's the name of the host? It's about time we name and shame them.

Christofori · April 19, 2006, 11:17:13

Agreed.

On a side note, did the server's time get mis-set or is it just me? :shock:

EDIT: Ah, perhaps it's the overall PHPBB time zone setting.

rewbs · April 19, 2006, 15:50:23

I figured out how to get us some automated forum backups taken from and stored on a remote system. I was going to make them publicly available, but then noticed they contain all Private Messages, so I won't.

Anyway, I'll make sure a couple of other people (forum admins) have access to them. Currently new snapshots are taken every 6 hours, and are not deleted until they are 1 week old. They can be restored by using phpBB's built-in restore feature, which is available to admins in the admin panel.

I feel safer now.

Squirrel Havoc · April 19, 2006, 16:21:23

You know, everytime I hear of someone complaining about their hosting, I get to thinking of mine. I've had it 3 years, my site has neever been hacked, never went down, never needed a backup, but backups are automatically setup when you sign up. I get PHP, MySQL, 20 1GB POP3 access accounts, 100 subdomains,5GB storage, 250GB (!!!!!!!) bandwidth, crap I dont use like templates, wizards, php scripts ready-to-use like blog/guestbook/stats, stuff like that. I can't say anything about the 24/7 tech support because ive never had a problem. And this is the business starter package! And all of this plus more for *gasp* $11.95USD a month, which includes initial domain registration. I understand the speed is pretty good all over the world, oh yeah I get password protected pages if I want, so I can setup my own porno site

So if anyone is looking for a hosting company, I would recomend Yahoo Geocities.