Disaster on the TF Wiki

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16th March 2009, 11:18 AM
FFN

Disaster on the TF Wiki - DON'T VISIT THE WIKI

DON'T VISIT THE WIKI - YOUR BROWSER CACHE IS IMPORTANT

Okay. The wiki is stuffed. Apparently the tech person at the server company or whatever decided to do a software update before he had secured our database (and its backups) into a safe location. Apparently he BLOODY STORED THE BLOODY BACKUPS ON THE SAME SERVER AS THE SITE.

I'm merely a regular editor, so I'm not involved with the running of the wiki or any of its technical aspects. I had to hear it from a fellow editor, and some of the moderators only just heard about it.

In the spirit of helping out a fellow site, I would respectfully request visitors from this board help us out by turning your browser offline (all windows must be turned off) and going through your offline pages cache/history and saving the pages you have visited. It may help us restore a portion of articles back to their latest status. This is one of the emergency last-resort solutions an admin suggested, along with googling every page and hoping to heck that Google has cached a relatively recent version of every page.

At the moment, I have no idea where to send these pages, so you'd have to just sit on them for the moment if you choose to help us out.

You have no idea how furious everybody is. I find that the Christian Bale rant works very well for this situation.

Thanks for reading.

Your Pal,
FFN
16th March 2009, 11:24 AM
kup

So you lost the whole site? wow, sorry.

I will search through my caches.

Edit: Hey, the site is still up and running.
16th March 2009, 11:32 AM
FFN

Don't visit the site right now as it's a VERY old backup from our Wikia days. The site is currently online because the tech guy is apparently investigating a fix.
16th March 2009, 11:35 AM
STL

I've barely visited at all recently so I doubt I can help. will check when I get home but best of luck
16th March 2009, 03:52 PM
griffin

I've only been to one tfwiki page since my last cache purge, so I can only help with the AHM #8 page. I'm sure someone else may have that page on their computer since it is only new, but if by chance you do need what I have (I've located 37 files from tfwiki, from that one visit), but not sure exactly what I have (and everytime I try to isolate the individual files, the computer renames them, so won't transfer them all).
The 37 files take up about 600kb if you want me to just email them to you (somehow), in case I have something in there that you don't have.
17th March 2009, 01:40 AM
FFN

I'm not technically versed enough in the running of the website, but apparently they're trying to find a relatively recent backup and restore the site from that, and using cached pages (either from our browser caches or google caches) is kind of a last resort if no backup can be found or restored. I assume the latter solution would entail us manually editing or creating over 8000 articles, which would suck. I'd suggest hanging on to whatever you have.

HOPEFULLY, we won't need them.
18th March 2009, 07:30 AM
FFN

Damage control update: I think our database backups are totally screwed. Currently we're working on saving thousands of Google caches (current up to March 10-12, though unfortunately some have updated to the 16th, wiping out the past 9 months of work on those pages). Naturally articles and additions made since March 10-12 are not cached by Google.
18th March 2009, 09:03 AM
i_amtrunks

That is one big bugger.

Hope the company that hosts your site is giving you guys special treatment and whatnot to make up for such a monumental stuff-up.
18th March 2009, 11:33 AM
jaydisc

There are two types of people in the world:

1. Those who backup

2. Those who will backup

My apologies if I sound like I'm kicking you when you're down. I'm just hoping this might prevent the next atrocity for someone else...

And remember, if you can't restore a backup, there's no point in having it. In other words....

TEST YOUR ABILITY TO RESTORE YOUR BACKUPS PERIODICALLY!
18th March 2009, 11:44 AM
Paulbot

I've lost some fan contributions that only existed on the forum and know not to do that now. I did ask Griffin if he had access to any backups of the board and I think he was looking into it.

How do I look through the cache though? It used to be easy but with the latest versions of IE and Firefox it seems to be harder. There's no folder of files like there was.
18th March 2009, 11:48 AM
kup

Personally, I have been lazy with my personal back ups. At work everything is all good in the backup and restore department but my home computer is relying on the stability of my HDDs!

I keep saying to myself - Back it up - but I never get around it. I think that I will buy a giant capacity portable Hard drive and copy all the stuff there.

So I guess I am both a:

1. Someone who does backup - Professionally

2. Someone who will backup - At home.
18th March 2009, 01:53 PM
Saintly

anything that is even a little bit important is worth a backup

heck i've even backup some that doesn't work when I test it later

That said, if it is your life.. you need to do it... just write a xcopy batch
19th March 2009, 10:25 AM
dirge

Some of you may know that the server hosting cliffbee.com fell over a few weeks ago. My most recent backup of the server was about 2 weeks old, although the website itself is always backed up, since I keep a copy on my iMac.

The 2 week old backup of the server was sufficient, thankfully - once I'd sourced a replacement for the dead server.

I have to admit, I'm glad I have the local backup of the website files, otherwise I would have lost around two weeks work. While that would be recoverable, it took me around 2 days to restore (once I had a server sourced), instead of a few weeks. Much of that time was reinstalling the O/S on the new server and customising a few settings - most of the server's configuration files were backed up (some, such as Squirrelmail, run as a database, but most I could simply copy).

I feel your pain, FFN!
20th March 2009, 07:56 AM
jaydisc

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

Personally, I have been lazy with my personal back ups....

I keep saying to myself - Back it up - but I never get around it.

This is so common. You must automate backup, because it's always the week or month or months that you haven't been doing it that disaster strikes. Hard drives are still the best combination of cheap, large and reliable.

Using IMAP or a web provider for email instead of POP gives you a built in backup. The same goes for using a service like Flickr or photobucket.

A few US friends have been recommending a service call Mozy, which is an online backup service. The benefit here of course is if your place burns down, along with your backup drive, you're still somewhat protected.

They have a free 2GB product, and for US $4.95 per month they have unlimited storage. The only problem with the latter is that SOME Australian ISPs charge you uploaded traffic and backing up 100's of GBs would adversely affect most quotas.
20th March 2009, 10:25 AM
tron07

Dont they have daily, weekly, monthly, yearly type of backup to fall back on?
20th March 2009, 12:35 PM
kup

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaydisc

This is so common. You must automate backup, because it's always the week or month or months that you haven't been doing it that disaster strikes. Hard drives are still the best combination of cheap, large and reliable.

Using IMAP or a web provider for email instead of POP gives you a built in backup. The same goes for using a service like Flickr or photobucket.

A few US friends have been recommending a service call Mozy, which is an online backup service. The benefit here of course is if your place burns down, along with your backup drive, you're still somewhat protected.

They have a free 2GB product, and for US $4.95 per month they have unlimited storage. The only problem with the latter is that SOME Australian ISPs charge you uploaded traffic and backing up 100's of GBs would adversely affect most quotas.

I don't need anything fancy, my personal data management is pretty basic and not much changes from one week to the next. I think I will just buy a USB SATA HDD encasement and a 300+ GB HDD and I am all set.

I was thinking of doing a RAID but couldn't be bothered - I am not like most people who keep invaluable photos or other irreplaceable stuff in the HDD. At most I would loose a few videos and some saved games.

On a related Real Life note: The HR manager where I work had been keeping all her PSTs, files and just about everything in her local laptop HDD despite being told to keep important stuff on the network/external storage. Her HDD died and she lost everything. She begun to get really upset and started crying.

Now her department has to pay $1500-$2000 in data recovery services as the HDD had a mechanical failure.
20th March 2009, 01:11 PM
Saintly

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

Now her department has to pay $1500-$2000 in data recovery services as the HDD had a mechanical failure.

That's quite alot for HDD data recovery
20th March 2009, 01:45 PM
kup

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saintly

That's quite alot for HDD data recovery

I called several places and that is the best price I could find with extra 'hidden' costs. Keep mind that the HDD is physically broken on the inside.
20th March 2009, 01:52 PM
Saintly

that's true...

is it the place in st. leonards?
20th March 2009, 01:57 PM
kup

No its in New Zeland but they courrier fro free.

That's what I like about these guys, they give it all to you in one package instead of (we charge you for this, then for that and now this and so forth). On top of that, they are the cheapest and painless since they handle everything.

I personally put more value in the 'they handle everything' bit because it isn't really my responsibility but I know that HR would constantly bother me with it asking all sorts of questions if the process was more involved. It's also coming out of their department not mine if they choose to go forth with it.
20th March 2009, 02:56 PM
dirge

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

I think I will just buy a USB SATA HDD encasement and a 300+ GB HDD and I am all set.

I have a USB HDD case sitting idle at my place, dude... don't rush out and buy one (:
20th March 2009, 04:06 PM
jaydisc

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

I don't need anything fancy, my personal data management is pretty basic and not much changes from one week to the next. I think I will just buy a USB SATA HDD encasement and a 300+ GB HDD and I am all set.

Sounds good. Just make sure you automate it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

I was thinking of doing a RAID but couldn't be bothered - I am not like most people who keep invaluable photos or other irreplaceable stuff in the HDD. At most I would loose a few videos and some saved games.

Yeah, RAID gives you speed and protects you against hardware failure. It doesn't do much for version control or fire/theft. Definitely would be overkill based on your statements.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kup

On a related Real Life note: The HR manager where I work had been keeping all her PSTs, files and just about everything in her local laptop HDD despite being told to keep important stuff on the network/external storage. Her HDD died and she lost everything. She begun to get really upset and started crying.

I guess we'll put her in the "will backup" group.
20th March 2009, 09:22 PM
FFN

Quote:

Originally Posted by tron07

Dont they have daily, weekly, monthly, yearly type of backup to fall back on?

All borked. Went back to a July 2008 database, the earliest from the Wikia database dump, so it also has 500,000 links back to wikia and the old Teletraan 1 site embedded in every page and in every revision of every page. Basically designed to screw us on google searches and to make the site look like a mirror for Wikia should anybody stumble upon it.

When we initially moved to our server, one of our members modified the import script to remove all of those links before they went on our database. But since the bloody hose wrecked the lot, they panicked and used the earliest database. I am informed the links in earlier revisions won't cause a problem, but we have to remove the wikia links from about 4000-odd pages.