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Well now... That was NOT FUN!!

Tourmeister

Keeper of the Asylum
Admin
Joined
Feb 28, 2003
Messages
51,145
Reaction score
8,056
Location
Huntsville
First Name
Scott
Last Name
Friday
I apologize for the site being down for the last 24 hours or so.

For the first time in 16 years, I accidentally nuked a bunch of threads that I did NOT intend to delete. Of course, an instant after clicking "YES" I realized the first pebble of the avalanche had been set in motion and there was no getting it back. It was a sick in the bottom of the gut feeling... I literally felt like I was gonna :puke:

What made it especially bad was that quite a few old but popular ride reports had recently been brought back to the top of the thread list. Many of them have several hundred replies and easily that many images... Once the threads were deleted, so were the images because all the linked images had recently been converted to attachments. So there was NO way I'd be able to rebuild these threads. Once I realized that the only way to recover the content would be to go back to the most recent backup of the site and do a complete restore. My hosting service does a complete back up of the server every other day. They did one about 15 minutes BEFORE I did the update, and then another just AFTER I nuked those threads!! Talk about bad timing! :doh: This meant losing all the new content since I did the upgrade just after Midnight Tuesday morning. The good thing is that most of it was just basic chatter type posts and not to much serious content, like another big ride report or massive event planning thread.

Getting the site back on line turned into a real mess. The hosting service had a hardware failure on their end this afternoon, which was delaying their ability to respond to my crisis because that was affecting a lot of other people. My home ISP seems to be having issues because of a storm that came through last night and this morning. That was causing me to experience PAINFULLY slow upload/download speeds for transferring files back and forth to the server. Then, apparently the upgrade file that I had downloaded originally from the XF site somehow got corrupted. Of course I did not realize this until after multiple attempts at uploading it and several failed attempts at executing the upgrade. So I had to go back to their site and download it again, then upload it again, and it FINALLY worked!!

I AM working to get automated backups in place to make a copy of everything daily. That was on the post upgrade to do list and I just didn't get it done in time... Another case of bad timing. :doh:

I still have the old HostGator VPS that I originally moved the site to when I made the change from vB to XF. That is good for at least another 2-1/2 years because they don't do refunds after the first six weeks. It's paid for, so I'll use it as an off-site backup of the live server. This is what I will be working on setting up for the rest of the evening.

Again, I am sorry for having to nuke the content of the last few days and I apologize if it messed anything up for you.

Thanks for being patient while I wear callouses on my forehead from banging it against the keyboard... :headbang:
 
I did make a backup of the database BEFORE they did the restore on the server using the backup from before the upgrade. I have a copy of that on my machine here at home. I have an install of XF that runs locally on this machine and it is setup with a copy of that backup. So I do have the content from the last few days, but there is no easy way to extract it from this database and import it into the new database. What I will do though is scan through the threads from the last few days and see if there are any which I might be able to recreate from scratch on the live site.
 
You called it scott. You reciently mentioned how bad things happen to you in computer issues that others just don't experience.

I know you strive to make this place the best it can be, and it is! I think we will survive a few threads or posts lost.šŸ˜‰
 
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Thanks for the work!

Being completely ignorant on these things how much storage does this forum require to run?
 
Thanks for the work!

Being completely ignorant on these things how much storage does this forum require to run?

The forum software itself is not that large. The database is about 1.5 GB. The real problem is the attachments. I just did a full backup of entire website and it was 60GB. My VPS only has 125GB of storage space. So if I try to do a backup of everything, it gets a bit cramped. So I am trying to figure out how to do off-site backups. But, I think I still need to have the room to do one backup so that it can then be moved off-site. I may have to look into expanding my storage space.

Edit: The HostGator server has 240GB of space available. So I could do three backups there probably.
 
Of course, an instant after clicking "YES" I realized
The amount of time between clicking and realizing is often referred to as an "ohnosecond."

All good here, probably lost some PM's between me and Esko but we had a good lunch yesterday and I got a new aux tank for a great price of the cost of lunch. We are good so no worries about that lost data.
 
Knowing nothing of the stress involved, it didn't seem that long to get things going again. Thanks for stressin' for me!
SS
 
Lots of stress of late I'm sure, a few lesions learned apparently, my main thought and hope is that you'll soon be able to enjoy a new and better 'normal', returning to giving your Family the time and attention I know you want to dedicate to them rather than to chores relating to this forum.

I, and I'm sure all of your forum 'family', have nothing but endless appreciation and gratitude for the time and effort you dedicate to us.

Thank You, Scott, and Thank You to your Family for sharing your time and energy.
 
In my IT career, I probably spent a couple of hundred sleepless nights putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. I have a pretty good idea what you've been through over the last day, and totally empathize. Thanks for all your hard work.
 
Thank you, Scott. Like Tim, Humpty Dumpty is hard to put back together again. I remember one long night being called in by a client who only used us for emergencies, trying to get some sleep on a love seat while a 2 yr old tape backup restored, only to fail around 5am, after it ran all night. I sent you an email about block level incremental backups for linux. Let me know if I can help in any way. Good luck.
 
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We appreciate you giving us all a place to converse. You are doing a fine job. This site helps us develop good life long friends and quality riding buddies. It also gives us a chance to meet new people,see beautiful pictures,learn,and share stories and concerns. Thank you so much Scott for all the hard work and long hours you put in.
 
No worries, things happen. I'm an operations end user so I'm one that tells IT when it doesn't work and have no idea why. Being one that works in the "but are they breathing" end of things, everything up to that is manageable and there's no need to lose one's marbles.

Thanks for the work keeping the site running and us end users taken care of.
 
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