Status of Recovery

[Twin Rose]

I've decided to post a bit of an update on the status of how the recovery of EN World is going, to keep you all informed. My focus has been on the gamestore, since the forums will or will not be recovered by the attempted binary restore.

Files: About 60% of the files have been restored for download, and the process is moving MUCH faster now, I expect to be nearly done soon.

Links: Links have been updated and fixed.

Formatting: Formatting has been restored in most areas of EN World.

Review System: Several bugs in the review system have been fixed, and the templates all in working order. I'm just waiting on the go ahead to make it 'go live' again.

Publisher forums and a few other things are simply waiting for me to find out whether or not the binary recovery is going to work. If they aren't, then I have plans to do them manually, though sadly the posts will still be lost.

If you notice any problems at all, please let me know.

 

[Piratecat]

If the recovery actually works - which would be great! - we'll want to give everyone several days to download threads they now wish to save. We'll also have to figure out how to record and add back in everyone who has since registered anew.

 

[Henry]

Well, if (1) Russ has been working on manually restoring the Comm. Supp. accounts, and almost done, and (2) we've been actively making new posts like rabbits, then it may be more advantageous to set the restored database up as a separate archived forum site, so people can get the stuff they want from it for a period of time, rather than the other way around.

 

[Twin Rose]

Well, if (1) Russ has been working on manually restoring the Comm. Supp. accounts, and almost done, and (2) we've been actively making new posts like rabbits, then it may be more advantageous to set the restored database up as a separate archived forum site, so people can get the stuff they want from it for a period of time, rather than the other way around.

That was actually my thought as well, Henry. It should be quite doable that way (assuming it can be done at all). In either case, I would prefer to get the 'go ahead' at this point just in case.

The same I believe could be said for reviews? I'm not really sure.

 

[Piratecat]

You know, I think I knew that and simply forgot. That makes a ton of sense!

Thanks for all the hard work you and Michael are doing, Chris.

 

[Iku Rex]

Possibly a stupid question, but...

Is there any chance you could us this "binary restore" to add the newer (since the crash) post to the DB too?

 

[LightPhoenix]

Is there any chance you could us this "binary restore" to add the newer (since the crash) post to the DB too?

I'm not Chris or Michael, but the answer is no.

Think of the binary restore as a snapshot of the database/forums taken at the time it was made. Anything afterward would not be included. Hence the talk about having an archived forum for people to copy posts from.

You can't simply add database entries from the new board to the old one either. From what little I understand about vBulletin, there would be conflicts that would arise and could (and likely would) corrupt the database again. For instance, each post is assigned a unique number (for database retreival). This one that I'm typing is 2853251. But a post with that number likely exists in the old forums already. So this post can't be merged in. I'd go out on a limb and say that every post made so far on this current incarnation of the forums would face the same problem. So the only viable solution is for users to find their posts in a seperate archived version and copy them manually.

[edit] Wrong post number,

 

[Jdvn1]

Thanks for the update!