Fpn Database Restored After Crash

[Admin]

Dearest members of the Board,

 

As you will likely have noticed, we were down for a few days.

 

On Friday, May 27, around 21:30 UTC / 22:30 BST / 18:30 EDT a database glitch resulted in us losing at a quick glance at least 800 - 900 member accounts, including a few moderator and admin accounts.

 

After trying to do a local restore for a few hours, we shut down FPN, first in order to try a partial and a complete database restore, and when that didn't work, we only had the option to do a full restore from the backup of Thursday, May 26, 17:00 EDT / 22:00 BST / 21:00 UTC, thereby losing some data, for approximately 1400 posts. This we considered to be a better option than losing at least 100,000+ posts from quite a few respected members here, including the loss of those members.

 

The full restore was finished at around 17:00 EDT / 22:00 BST / 21:00 UTC on Saturday, May 28. The site came online for a short time span, while we were checking initial data integrity. It appeared there were still some data problems, and as we didn't want to take any risks, we brought down the board again, and did a full integrity test of the entire database and board, with fixes as and where needed.

 

This required the rebuild of all posts, topics, member registrations, PMs, and a host of smaller items, and resulted amongst others automatically in the recount of posts. As we implemented the 30+/30+ rule on January 28, 2010, i.e., 30+ days of registration and 30+ posts in relevant forums (non-Chatter posts), and we hadn't done these integrity test for quite a few years, this rebuild resulted for post counts in the following:

 

1. All total post counts are likely down due to posting in spam topics and deleted double postings.

2. The main profile post count number lists the total remaining posts, including those in Chatter.

3. The mini profile panel next to each post only indicates all non-Chatter posts, IOW, only those that would count towards a Gold membership.

 

Because of the rules introduced early 2010, the number in the mini profile panel will likely differ significantly from the number in the full profile, for most members here. Nothing to worry about, however, and as integrity of the database is more important, in our consideration, than a mere number of posts next to one's member id, we considered this to be a minor evil. The recount was done automatically, with the rebuild of the posts, topics and forums, and this also took care of any old, dead links to no longer exisiting posts and topics (increasing integrity IOW).

 

All of the above was finished around 22:30 BST / 21:30 UTC / 17:30 EDT on Sunday, May 29, so we were effectively down for 2 entire days.

 

What did we lose because of this unavoidable exercise?

 

1. All replies, topics, comments, images and classifieds posted after the backup date and time, as mentioned, approximately 1400.

2. All new registrations after the backup date and time, approximately 60 new registrations

3. The automatic server startup procedure

 

1. and 2. is only something you all can fix, so please add the replies, topics, comments, images and classifieds again we lost, as well as you can, and for those who registered and whose registrations were undone due to the restore, please be so kind to reregister.

As to 3.: we are busy working on that right now. It may take some time to get this in order. Upon a glitch or upon a restart the server used to automatically start up any services it needed for FPN to work correctly, but this has reverted to beign a manual job. Until this is fixed, we may suffer from temporary outages occasionally - nothing to worry about, as nothing will get lost once "Added". It is just annoying. We will inform you when this is fixed again.

 

Update: Automatic startup procedure is fixed now too!

 

During the process of restoring and checking/fixing, we tried to keep you all up-to-date as much as possible through a "FPN maintenance" type temporary screen - we do hope this did help in mitigating, at least to some degree, any serious addiction withdrawal symptoms .

 

Warm regards,

The FPN Admin Team

Edited May 30, 2011 by wimg
Added update for automatic startup fix

[enricof]

I guess you had an hard weekend, didn't you?

No time for Montecarlo F1 race...

 

 

Thanks for your effort and welcome back, I was beginning to be seriously worried.

[pmhudepo]

Thanks for all your hard work. Much appreciated!

[Defacto]

Thank you very much for all your hard work. I started to get worried as well!

[AlanE]

I was just about to book into rehab !!

 

Good job guys.

 

Alan

[diplomat]

Thank you, really. I work in IT and I know it's not easy when it happens.

[somnath1077]

Thanks for all the work!

[sebas0902]

Thanks for all that great job

[Surfbits]

Didn't know how much I missed this forum until it was offline. Thank you for all you've done keeping this the place that it is, and working to make it better. Just so you know we do care.

[mallymal1]

Good work...and many thanks.

[wimg]

Well, we are now finally in the clear, completely (knock wood ).

 

Wamr regards, Wim

[mitz009]

Thanks to the administrators for all of the hard work and time you put in over the weekend. I certainly appreciate all of your efforts and found the maintenance screen to be highly effective in setting expectations, which is a huge factor in maintaining the board members' sanity.

[Alohamora]

 

During the process of restoring and checking/fixing, we tried to keep you all up-to-date as much as possible through a "FPN maintenance" type temporary screen - we do hope this did help in mitigating, at least to some degree, any serious addiction withdrawal symptoms .

 

Warm regards,

The FPN Admin Team

 

Yes, those updates were very much appreciated! Good job getting things all squared away again.

[AVITWeb]

+1....thanks for keeping it going guys (up just before the withdrawal....WHEW!)

[Lexaf]

Thanks for all your hard work. Much appreciated!

 

+1! Thanks!

[ArchiMark]

Thanks for all your hard work on this, Wim....and thanks for updating the progress status periodically, that was very helpful and reassuring....

 

 

All the best,

 

Mark

[foxtail1]

Thanks for all you do, and I did especially appreciate the updates on the repair page as things progressed.

 

:notworthy1:

[The Good Captain]

Just to reiterate the other posts - THANKS!

[Korybas]

It was the longest weekend for me, without FPN to keep me company!

Thank you all for spending so much time to give us a haven from the chaotic outside world, which in its majority when it says"writing" it means "typing"....

Edited May 30, 2011 by Korybas

[Surf Monkey]

Excellent work. Kudos to the admin staff. I'm sure this is the last thing they wanted to be doing this weekend.