URGENT:::: Database GONE!!!

[cppus]

Hi

I own http://www.dndiscuss.com , last night some how the entire database disapeared. The files were reseted to what they were 4 days ago!

The worse thing is i didnt back up!

I get the error

Database error in vBulletin :

Invalid SQL:
SELECT title, data
FROM datastore
WHERE title IN ('options', 'cron', 'forumcache', 'usergroupcache', 'stylecache',
'userstats', 'birthdaycache', 'maxloggedin', 'iconcache', 'eventcache',
'mailqueue')

mysql error: Table 'dnforum_vbulletin.datastore' doesn't exist

mysql error number: 1146

Date: Friday 25th of February 2005 11:54:50 AM
Script: http://www.dndiscuss.com/
Referer: http://www.dndiscuss.com/


I think the entire database is gone! right?

Have i lost everything? how could this have happend?

I spent like $200 in ads, its all gone down the drain now?

[Zachery]

Contact your host. looks like they rolled back the filesystem.

[cppus]

I did. No reply. i contacted them 5 x. Noone replies! I got one email to say we will restore it to the database it was yesterday or the day before or maybe the day before that! and on their site they say they backup everyday!

I am really stressed over this!

[Zachery]

NEVER rely on a host for backups. (unless you are specificly paying more for such a service)

Even the BEST hosts might miss a day, or have their data go bad for some reason.

Theres not much besides reinstalling you can do unless they can and do restore your backup.

[cppus]

How easy to lose money...

Well i sure am never going to do this again. I wan't expecting this at all! Is there any programs which backup the database for you evey hour? As our forums are very busy and i rather not lose any data any more.

Thanks.

[Zachery]

Every hour would be overkill in my personal opinion.(and consume lots of space)

Once a day would be good, or once a week at the least (Depending on activity).

You could write a script to preform a cron on a time basis, but I am the wrong person to ask about that.

[wbear]

I've found this one works quite well, especially if you have a second server to FTP the backup to.

[Lurk]

I prefer this: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62149 . It uses vBulletin's 'Scheduled Task Manager,' so it will run every time you want it to automatically.

[rh2004]

NEVER rely on a host for backups. (unless you are specificly paying more for such a service)

Even the BEST hosts might miss a day, or have their data go bad for some reason.

Theres not much besides reinstalling you can do unless they can and do restore your backup.

Ths is very true last night I relied on one and it never worked

Instead of backing up my site, I over-wrote it with the last SSH backup I made 4
days ago .. Never do backup's with SSH when your half a sleep

[Vtec44]

I have a cron job that zips up the mysql dump to a folder every week. I just FTP in and download it.

[rh2004]

Can you tell me the settings you use for the cron .. ?

[wbear]

Keep it above root, so no one but you should run it.

php -q /home/username/database/dbsender.php > /dev/null

For times, make that however often you think you need to back it up. Daily, weekly, etc...

[weirdpixels]

You could always use the sh script that comes with the vbulletin download and set up a cron job to run this script whenever you want. This will rename your database to the database name and the date that the backup was made, so no need to worry about overwriting data.

[Dennis Olson]

My script (which I run manually, due to the size of my database) first shuts down the apache webserver, then performs a mysqldump, then tarballs everything into a single file. The external images, the board graphics kept seperately from the database, the whole deal. Database is about 12 gig. script takes about 45 minutes to run. At the end, the webserver is restarted.

[Icheb]

You don't have to shut down the webserver because MySQL automatically locks the entire database that the backup is being performed on. Every request will just wait until the database lock is removed again.