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Good & Bad News: aka, Where is my account!?


Jim Alfredson

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Hello members,

As most of you probably saw, the forum was down for a few hours today due to my own incompetence. After arriving home from the dentist this afternoon, I logged into the forum to find a SQL error ("too many connections"). Usually when this happens, I go into the database and clear a table called "forumsessions", which basically boots everyone who is on the board (and thus connected to the database) at once.

Well, through my haze of dental numbness, and Zora clamoring for lunch, I accidentally emptied the wrong table. I emptied a table called "forummembers" which contains all the info for every member of the forum, including the username, passwords, post counts, avatars, signatures, email addresses, etc. etc.

"Oops," I thought. But no big deal because on March 22nd, if you remember, I found out that there was no back-up in place for my server and immediately ordered weekly backups at $50 per month. So, I figured I would call tech support, have them restore the missing table, and everything would be fine.

Well, my order for weekly back-ups never went through. That's right. They didn't process the order.

"Ok," I thought, "I have some backups of my own that should work." Wrong. I lost many of my own backups in a harddrive crash last winter. The others were not done correctly (operator error) on my part and thus unusable.

Long story short: I found an old backup from July of 2005 that worked. Unfortunately, we've lost about 400+ new member accounts that had signed up between now and then.

If you registered for this forum between July 2005 and now, you're account is gone. Your posts are still there, but they will appear to be written by no one.

Here is what you can do if your account is no longer active: Please re-register with the same email address you used the first time. Please send me an email telling me what that email address is. There are some left-over tables from the database that I might be able to cross-reference, using your email, in order to link your old posts to your new registration. I'm not promising anything, but it's worth a shot.

Thank you all in advance for your understanding. I have asked Invision directly for suggestions on how to adequately back up this board so this does not happen again (since my hosting company seems to be inept).

Any concerns or questions can be sent to me directly at info@organissimo.org

Thank you!

ps. You might have noticed that your post counts are different. When I imported the table from the old database, the post counts reflected the date of that table (July 2005). So then I used a tool to recount the board statistics, including individual post counts. Your count is probably smaller due to deleted threads and deleted posts. When you delete your own post, your post count stays the same. Only when I run this tool does it reflect changes from posts that are no longer in the database.

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ps. You might have noticed that your post counts are different. When I imported the table from the old database, the post counts reflected the date of that table (July 2005). So then I used a tool to recount the board statistics, including individual post counts. Your count is probably smaller due to deleted threads and deleted posts. When you delete your own post, your post count stays the same. Only when I run this tool does it reflect changes from posts that are no longer in the database.

Not the post counts! :blink:

:lol:

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I lost my avatar and signature as well as about 1000 posts. Should I reset my avatar and sig?

:lol:

Now that you mention it, I lost about 2,500 posts. I suddenly feel less fat now :D

Some members lost a lot more...

Edited by J.A.W.
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Guest Chaney

Lost over 600 in the post count.

YES! :tup

:rsly:

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Jim. Sounds like it'll be a real pain in the arse to get things back to normal. I don't envy you your being the proprietor of this place; lotsa work.

Edited by Chaney
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Jim, don't worry about it, things happen.

I just hope things are OK for you since going to the dentist.

Wow, now I am a newbie all over again!

Yup - I've fallen from the very cool "Supa-Groover" back to the more staid and ambiguous "Veteran Groover" since lunchtime.

Ah well - nothin' but love for ya, Jim.

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