May 28 2017 Forum crash, and recovery

[James Patten]

On May 28, Ed Lecuyer informed me that the forum was showing an error of some kind, looked like the forum database software had crashed.

I was unable to recover us from that state.  I tried installing a new version of the forum, but ran into bigger trouble (namely, a blank slate!).

I had our host restore the website to their full backup from Friday night/Saturday morning midnight.  The forum is back in operation, minus any posts from Saturday and Sunday.  I do not plan to try to recover them.

[John McNamara]

Many thanks for your efforts!
-A Happy Reader

[Bill Sample]

Let me second John's thanks.  I found there was a problem when I tried to get on over the weekend. 

[Bob Holmes]

So thankful for the recovery!!!  Bet it was pretty scary for you guys...

Another lesson in why it's so important to back up your own systems EVERY day.  Including your home computer.  If you don't have a backup plan, run -- don't walk -- to get either a backup drive and software (such as Acronis) or a backup cloud solution.

Bob

[Wayne Laepple]

Thanks, Team. Not the most fun for a Memorial Day weekend. Well done.

[Jeff Schumaker]

I thought something might be wrong when it wouldn't let me log in this morning. Glad to see things are up and running again.

Jeff S.

[Bill Reidy]

Thanks James.  Working in IT, I understand all the work and angst this must have provided you and Ed the past 24+ hours.  Greatly appreciated!

[Robert M. Ellsworth]

I wonder if this is related to the RyPN crash. They are still down as of 8:30 pm Monday with no explanation I have been able to find.

[Ed Lecuyer]

First of a HUGE thank you to James for getting the forum restored. This issue quickly dwarfed my IT/web/database experience and James stepped up to the plate to get it fixed - on his day off! Also, I was away from my PC for most of this outage, so I could only be of limited help - so James is the real hero.

I wonder if this is related to the RyPN crash. They are still down as of 8:30 pm Monday with no explanation I have been able to find.

No. We are not connected to RYPN in any way and it appears that their forum is functional in some capacity (I did see it go live briefly, now it is dead again.) Although it is fun to speculate that some North Korean hacker really dislikes US heritage railroading...

[Eric Schade]

well done James!!!!  I tried it over the weekend and   

[Ira Schreiber]

He who named the little arrow thingy on the screen a  CURSOR knew what he was talking about

[Steve Smith]

James, you are a saint!

You took our ailing forum into Saint James Infirmary--IT Wing, and made it well again. Hurrah!

Thank you so much!

[James Patten]

The real thanks go to the service personnel at our website host site, TotalChoice Hosting (http://totalchoicehosting.com/.  All I did was write a ticket, they did all the work.  Of course getting to that point took a while of messages back and forth between Ed and I.  It was Ed's idea to restore the website from back up.

[John McNamara]

There's still a bug of some sort. When I enter my name, a box pops up and reports that there is no such user. However, if I ignore the box and type in my password, everything is fine......
-John M

[John Kokas]

Now I'm noticing that the main website will not load completely.  Most of the links still work, but all I have is a blue background and text.