Board outage and fallout

[retrogmr]

Hey everyone,
The board took a pretty hard knock this morning around 7:30 PST; I've been able to restore data up to August 18th at this point, I'll be checking into whether more data can be recovered in the coming days.

In the meantime, resume your normal activities, abuse the admin (me, not Joe) as you see fit!

[Arcade Antics]

I will hurl NO abuse your way, only kudos for restoring the board!

Thanks, brother! :D

[dan2357]

Same here
I clicked the link at work this morning and ERROR
I almost went crazy, what to do at work today, but then I just read up on the FAQ's and checked out gameroom photos all morning.But happy to see its back

[stonecutter]

Not to give you too hard of a time..... but you mean you don't have some sort of daily backup system in place? I know this isn't like corporate data, so I won't flog you lol.

I feel for you though, its never fun to have to recover data, especially when the corporate big wigs start breathing down your neck, but I understand the Executives of Digital Press Inc. are a good group of people to work for.

This wasn't an act of terrorism was it?

[stonecutter]

I know its not important now, ( I understand they will be corrected if the posts can be recovered from a recent point in time) but post counts will be updated if people knew aproximately how many they had, I assume.

[WiseSalesman]

I was going to ask that as well, because I had approx. 125 and was really looking forward to getting a piece of that fruit someday! Ummm....that kind of came out wrong. Anyway, good job on getting the board back up, and we look forward to your continued efforts.

[Buffy DP]

I would have have thought that the recovery of the posts would have meant more than an individual's post count but maybe that's just me. I'm sure the post counts will be sorted.

~B.

[leonk]

OH NO! All those wonderful messages.. now gone!

what about the contest?

LK

[leonk]

You're right! I lost a few dozen post counts from my ID..

GRRRRR...

LK

[WiseSalesman]

Buffy, please don't misunderstand. Granted, it's not just about the post count, but it's very rare that anything extremely profound that will stand the test of time is said on here. Granted, I'd also like to have some of the conversations back in which I was involved, but, really, new conversations will spring up and we'll eventually forget about hte ones we posted in a month, or even a week, ago. Post count, on the other hand, seems to be somewhat of a status symbol around here, and it is also a somewhat valuable way of showing how long someone had been around (although, I guess we still have the join date for that).

[retrogmr]

@stonecutter: Yes, there was a backup system in place. However, since Unix boxes hate it when the power goes off without a propoer shutdown, the filesystem where said backups were kept was corrupted as well. Never rains but it pours :P

As far as post counts go, we'll hold off until I can definitively say whether the old database is coming back or not. If I can't recover the data, we can update people's post counts if needed.

[Britboy]

Hey, I hardly lost any posts! I guess it was a good thing to be stuck on that island for most of the lost period!

[ashbourn]

I had to re rejoin :(

[stonecutter]

@retrogmr... I hear you on your woes, I have been there. Its one thing to be doing backups all the time, but then you have situations like you mentioned or the ever popular media no longer works for the particular archive you need and so on. Things are not always as easy as they should be are they.

[GENESISNES]

strange for this to happen on 9/11.... :?

[Dobie]

Fortunately I didn't have to rejoin, but everything else is gone. I'm sure if the data is at all recoverable, it will be done. It sounds like a long evening for the DP crew.

[leonk]

Hmmm.. That's why I never backup a system on-to itself.

I can imagine the size of the board is ~20-50MB MAX. In this case, one needs a 10GB HD and a 486 running Linux (100$ MAX??) backing up the system over a local network. Run this box with ext3 (hence no corruption from power failure). This way you can have multiple updates!

Have the main server have 2 NIC's. One for the internet, and one for the maintenance internal network (backup network). This should cost ~20$ in NIC's and should be very secure from hackers.

Just some ideas..

LK

[sir_lavey]

All my posts have been lost in this terrible disaster :cry:

My life will be affected for every days I still have to live :(

Sylvain

[GENESISNES]

MY POSTS!!! damn, four away from a cherry.

[Mayhem]

Still got my new fruit... just!

[buttasuperb]

i think i was a couple posts away from 1800.

ah, who cares, ill get back there soon enough.

[retrogmr]

Hey everyone,
Well, after having three people take a look, I have to declare the old database dead. That, and it was going to be difficult to integrate the new posts that have happened since the restore.

The suggestions on ways to keep this from happening again are appreciated; it always gives me more food for thought. Thanks again for everyone's patience and understanding :)

[mauigamer]

It knocked off about 20 of my posts. Is there any way to get them back?

[mauigamer]

Actually I think it is closer to 40. If its a lot of work don't worry about it.

[tynstar]

I work with computers as well. It is a love hate deal.

I hate computers, and they love to piss me off :evil:

[CPUWIZ]

I lost about 60 posts ... grrr ! Not only that but my avatar link is busted too ... have to fix that.

[Atar1G1rl]

FYI, tried to adjust post counts as noted in some of the messages. If I have missed anyobody, please PM me and it shall be fixed in due time.

[punkoffgirl]

On an added note.. if you could please post the actual NUMBER of posts you had previously (say, 250) rather than the number you needed added, it would help avoid the mods double-upping post counts. I saw your request last night Maui, but I wasn't sure if Atar1g1rl had seen it already & fixed it, so I figured I'd wait.