About 3 weeks ago, on top of everything else going on, my server died, hardware failure. The backups that were supposed to be there weren't, and disk recovery failed.

Well, I now have an operational machine, and an empty 18 gig harddrive where my servers used to be.

I have a collection of off-line backups, that span the 2 years, and maybe as many 150 CD ROM's.

So, I'm in reconstruction/rebuilding state of all the servers.

I have two servers I need to try to revive quickly, just to access the data. After that, I will start to try to rebuild our main server -- Postcards.com. I figure it will be a long process, perhaps as much as a couple of weeks, not counting the "new" features. It all has to be backwards compatible to our old data. It was a 2 year old server, and I from experience I don't expect it to just spring to life again without problems. <sigh>.

During the rebuild, I will be adding in the image upload and other features that were discussed here over the past few months, or more. In order to rebuild my servers, I have to have many of these features, or it will take another 2 years to create.

I will also be going over the documentation to make sure it all jives with the new install.

Any "problems" you have encountered, please point out, and I'll try to see how it all fits together.

I'm actually rebuilding the servers from scratch, the only difference is my past experience, and that I have some guidelines and files (templates) already done. I should (in theory) hit the same problems that plague people in setting up sites, but due to having done it time and again, maybe I won't. :)

Hopefully, in the process, I will move all my mods to 2.1, finish the 2.1 of the image upload, and get the postcards module finished in a plugin format.

The FAQ site is off line, for now, but I will be making notes to add in to it, once I get a working 2.1 template site built. I don't see it getting back on line before the end of January.

Anyway, that's the update. I keep taking the punches, but I keep getting up. Hopefully, there is going to be an end to this, and it will all go back to "normal", whatever that is/was.




PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
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Just an update.

I'm still not up and running. My sites depend on a massive amount of data to be available (my SQL database points to files/items on the harddrive), and I'm having a time getting it all back to where it was.

Due to 2 years of upgrades, and trying to maintain compatibility during the upgrades, I had a lot of symlinks, and apache rewrite rules (which I have not reconstructed, or no longer remember) so it's taking more time.

Right now, my situation is:

1) No working install of Links SQL in a production site.
2) 1 working "new" install of links 2.1
3) No working versions of Links SQL 1.1x, 2.0x

Because I'm probably going to take this opportunity to upgrade the sites, as I breathe new life into them, whether I will have a working version of Links prior to 2.1 is in question.

Because 2.05 seems to be a point where many people still are, I will try to ressurect 2 "generic" sites (sites I had not modified to any great extent) with 2.05 code intact, but I don't know if I can, realistically.

I just thought I'd post an update, so people don't think I'm ignoring them.

FWIW: prior to the crash, I had about 50 Links SQL sites of various versions set up, in various states of modification, so I could pretty well quickly grab the code from it, and answer questions. Trying to resurrect all this old code is not in my best interest, from the point of view of time/effort. I have been off work for almost 5 months due to my daugthers problems, and now my server has been off-line for a month (and that was my only source of income) during our busy time of the year for on-line transactions and sales. So, as I try to bring the servers back, it will almost always be with 2.1 code (since that can self install, permissions mostly set, etc). I will try to bring a few 2.05 sites up, but going back further than that doesn't make much sense. These are sort of dire circumstances for me at this point, and very hard decisions are being made. I still have not been able to bring our main Postcards.com site back up, due to the data issues, and our 5 main sites are sitting on multiple CD's, not on-line.

I really can't answer specific questions, until I get a working site :) I just wanted to let people understand that.

My situation is sort of unique from most Links SQL users, in that on my main sites, the database was pointing to information not stored in the database (all manually uploaded, hence, the effort to create the image upload plugin). While most people could re-install their code, and set their database permissions, and be up and running, that isn't enough for me. All I get are errors, not founds, 404's and template problems. I have to get all my back-end data on-line, and that is where my hold up is. aDSL and FTP shows it's "age" when you try to do massive data transfers unattended.

I wanted to clarify that -- since usually a Links SQL site can be installed and running in under an hour (I had it down to 20-30 minutes). My situation is different. I was using Links as an image server, with a dozen or so related scripts working together.

I didn't want this to reflect badly on how links survives disasters :) Once I get my data reconstructed, I think I can install links on top of it in only a few hours (plus template tweaks, etc).

My other situation has not straightend out either -- we are in court 3x this week for my daughter, and 2x last week. As you may know, that kills a half a day (or more) for 5 minutes in front of a judge, and mostly it's simply deferring to another judge or another day. Frustrating, and yet it's all playing with my kids welfare and safety.

Robert



PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.

BTW -- in defense of symlinks and rewrite rules:

While in many cases being dirty hacks, and convenience features, as well as allowing old-links to work, and preventing people from seing 404's, they did have one other nice "side" benefit.

WHen I set up sites, I often used a symlink to an exisiting data directory, rather than uploading the data again -- even if it was being used differently (this is mostly in my clip-art, colors, logos, etc directories).

When FTP downloaded the sites for my personal "disaster" backups, it followed the symlinks, as if they were "real" links. So, my off-line backups have "complete" copies of each of the virtual sites, without symlinks (where possible).

This makes restoration of certain things much easier, and unlinks my sites from the burdon of years of upgrades :)

Every cloud has a silver lining if you look hard enough -- in this case, I can now put my sites on physically different machines, without missing data between them.

Just thought I would post this so people wouldn't fear the symlink <G>.




PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.

Sorry to hear about your nightmare

Pugdog,

I'm glad to see that things are getting worked out. I personally have learned a great deal from you - even now (Check your backups!) and have a good deal of respect for you.

As for the court stuff, I believe that the legal system is a complete mess and needs to be 're-formatted' too.

Take care.


Howard J. Brubaker

Thanks :)

It's been unbelievable. Wouldn't believe it if I wrote a novel -- "He's making this all up!"

Anyway -- yes! Check your backups! But I thought I had -- the software was installed, things were running, confirmation messages were sent, but I did't look for a year or more to make sure they were still being done.

Anyway,

Server #1 is up and running about 50%. I need to see if I can find a more recent backup of my data (the one I'm using I acknowledged was old, but it was handy). The recent stuff isn't there. But, I have Links 2.1 mostly working.

I have to hack a few scripts -- jump.cgi, and the plugins, then rewrite my postcards program to be 2.1 compatible, but after that, with any luck, I can start to try to make it live again.

Once my data was in place, the upgrade to 2.1 went pretty smoothly (as I had hoped!)

There were a few "gotchas" which I'll post later.

Robert



PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.