Website down for over 24 hours

[Mike]

Website and forum down for over 24 hours again.

Only just came back online.

[Rick]

Yes, I know. It picked the perfect time for me; I figure it wend down about the time I was getting into a taxi in Nairobi to go to the airport and catch a flight home, but I only noticed when I finally got back online over half a day later. I'm now back in the UK, and jet-lagged enough that I decided to leave off doing a restore from my backups.

I suspect the down-time earlier in the week was related. See http://status.ezpzhosting.com/services/chronos

As database corruption seems to have been involved in the server's problems, please report anything that appears to have gone missing or been messed up on the OAS website, gallery or forum.

Edit: Gallery's still down. I'll do something about that tomorrow after I've had some sleep and can think straight...

[Rick]

I have, I hope, successfully restored the gallery database now. Please report any missing or mangled content you might spot.

[RachelC]

Hiya. I have noticed that all the comments and advice regarding my Star Trails image that I uploaded on the 14 April are missing  Can't remember how to get rid of my rogue pixels!

[Kenny]

Rick, are you planning to restore lost messages from your own backups?

[Rick]

Oh dear. Hopefully the contributors will be able to re-advise you on that. Post a comment asking.

I gather that the server's database suffered some corruption, and they had to restore from the last known good backup, so, unfortunately, a day or two's conversation got lost in the bit bucket.

I hope that their determination of "last known-good backup" is accurate, and we're not going to find some stuff that's actually mangled in the databases they restored...

It'd be hard to restore from my own backups without also losing comments that have been made since the EZPZ restore, and if they weren't confident that the database was in a good shape after 14th April then my back-ups taken on 15th and 16th may be suspect.

Any idea how much was done in the way of changes between 14th and the time the server finally died? (I was dealing with other matters and not on the Net much until Friday morning.)

[Kenny]

Not sure. I can think of a few threads including Startrails, Going out observing request, and Dark sites near Orpington. I will repost the messages I lost.

[Kenny]

I have, I hope, successfully restored the gallery database now. Please report any missing or mangled content you might spot.

p.s. Gallery looks fine to me after a quick check. I'm one of the last people to have posted images and they are all where they should be. Thanks Rick.
Cheers
Kenny

[Rick]

What about the main website? I think you probably made the last changes there, too?

If things have gone missing from it, let me know, and I'll see what I can find in my back-ups...

[Kenny]

What about the main website? I think you probably made the last changes there, too?

If things have gone missing from it, let me know, and I'll see what I can find in my back-ups...

Good point. All the changes I made over the past couple of weeks to the Society Instruments page are missing i.e. uploaded photos and updates to descriptions, additional kit, etc. It looks like the original page before I made any changes.

Also, I just tried to upload a file to the gallery and I am getting a pop-up error "A valid form token could not be found".

[Rick]

Ok. I'll have a look and see whether I can restore a more recent version than they managed...

Hmmm... Not sure what might be causing the gallery issue... Possibly some permissions got bent.

[Rick]

Riiiiight.... Latest main website updates were made by you on 27th March, it seems. Wordpress updates were applied after that by me (on 7th or 8th). All the relevant files seemed OK on the server, so it was just the database that needed a fix. I've wiped and reinstated it from my back-up taken on 16th. Hope it looks better now.

[Rick]

...and I wiped some old session keys in the gallery. See whether logging in again lets you upload images, please.

[Kenny]

Thanks Rick. Society Instruments page looks fine now. I'll test the gallery later when I'm back on my pc.
Cheers
Kenny

[Kenny]

...and I wiped some old session keys in the gallery. See whether logging in again lets you upload images, please.

It's working now. I think the image I was using may have been too large.