Site is working again

Post by **_darin-houston** » Wed May 28, 2008 4:23 pm

Paidion wrote:I received a temporary password at that address and used it.

The problem for me is not only do I not use that old email address, I no longer have the ability to receive email from it.

Post by **_darin-houston** » Wed May 28, 2008 4:32 pm

By the way, I don't know what the state of the database is, but if it's like most, a corrupted table might prevent the forum from processing, indexing, and displaying the posts correctly, but the raw post data might still be there.

If there's a raw data dump or sql database that contains this in ANY way still associated by date or title or individual or whatever, I might be able to hack together a script or something to generate a useful document from that raw data to post for those following the past few weeks’ threads.

It won't be in our forum format necessarily, but might be available as a resource since there was some pretty deep stuff discussed in those posts that could not be easily recreated.

John, do let me know if there's any way I can help.

Post by **_Paidion** » Wed May 28, 2008 8:16 pm

The problem for me is not only do I not use that old email address, I no longer have the ability to receive email from it.

In that case, how do you manage to post on the forum?

Post by **_thrombomodulin** » Thu May 29, 2008 5:45 pm

Post by **_thrombomodulin** » Thu May 29, 2008 6:15 pm

I modified the script I used to make the index of scripture references ( http://haliku.merseine.nu/thenarrowpath ... index.html ), to make a backup copy of all topics present today. It would be difficult to recover the posts from HTML format, but not totally impossible.

John - It looks like phpBB uses an SQL database back end. Of the various databases that might be used here, I'm can only say I'm familiar with PostgreSQL. This database can be exported from the command line for backup/restore purposes with the 'pgdump' utility. I would expect whatever database used for this forum has some similar capabilities, which could be used to make a regular backup. If so, a daily backup could be made via a crontab entry on the server. This would probably make your job of restoring of a good username table easier for the next time it gets corrupted. I'd be glad to offer further help if there is any need. Thanks for all your work in keeping this forum up and running!

Pete

Post by **_Sean** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:24 am

Just wanted to thank John and the links Pete put up as well as make a test post.

Post by **_darin-houston** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:51 am

Paidion wrote:
The problem for me is not only do I not use that old email address, I no longer have the ability to receive email from it.
In that case, how do you manage to post on the forum?

My work computer apparently had a login cookie in it or something -- I don't even get the login prompt on that computer -- it just logs me in automatically.

Post by **_darin-houston** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:55 am

thrombomodulin wrote:I don't think posts were necessarily lost, though not they are not accessible by the usual means. The last 110 topics appear to be as follows. For example, the Acts 13:48 topic which someone was looking for is topic 2460.

Pete

Excellent work, Pete -- I'd like to see your script one day for the verses if you don't mind. Anyway, here's a bit more information for the mystery....

It does appear that the "topics" themselves are still there, but the table must have been corrupted since the posts since May 19th seem to be missing, though the page numbers in each topic associated with those additional posts are still in the topic pages (with links to nonexistant post ranges).

So, we didn't lose pre-5/19 data, but did lose post-5/19 data, it seems. I wonder if that's still in the tables, but the post number reference table was corrupted.

I also noticed some re-numbering of post numbers as I click on links to specific posts in some of my earlier emails, so I do suspect some corruption there.

Post by **_darin-houston** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:55 pm

Password fixed -- awesome! Thanks John!

New avatar of my son, Max.

Post by **_Rick_C** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:21 pm

2 things.

1. I got an email from FBFF member "Troy C."

Troy wrote:This is Troy C from the narrow path forum. Listen, I can't seem to post on the forum, nor are any of my posts there. Can you see what you can do about this for me?

I didn't really know what to tell him other than trying to re-register. I also told him I'd post this....

2. I've been to the phpBB Group site...(though I know next to nothing about it)... and saw some newer versions than our 2001, 2005 version. Would an "updated version" make any difference or improve this forum?

Thanks again, John and Pete.

Have a good rest of the weekend,