Welcome back!

[Klaus]

I think I got it mostly to work.

The temporary forum is still available here.
http://nodebb-backup.the-new-coffee-room.club

Your old logins should still work on this forum.

What doesn't work:

• Profile pictures are gone (if you still see some they are probably just cached by your browser, so make sure you upload a new one)
• I assume all file uploads are gone
• Twitter embedding does not work

What should work:

• all users restored
• all posts restored
• all PMs restored
• layout of the forum restored

[Klaus]

It turns out that the whole bruhaha was caused by a file permission issue of a single offending plugin, namely our Twitter plugin.

The incompatibility between the latest forum version and this plugin is so deep that it completely destroys an installation, with no possibility of going back to an old version or anything.

So - no Twitter embedding for the moment. I'll think about a solution.

[Klaus]

About profile pictures and uploads - @Axtremus could you maybe manually scan a backup that is at least three days old whether it contains a public/uploads folder or something? Maybe I can restore profiles etc.; I think I have only the backup of the database, but not of that folder (which is where profile images live).

[Doctor Phibes]

Nice going, Klaus - and thanks for all your work on this.

I think we should award you a 100% pay-raise!

[Klaus]

For the techies: It turns out that the information about installed plugins etc. is all part of the database, so what I had to do was to unpack the backup, transform it to readable text, find the part about the plugins, remove the information about the plugin from the database, package it back up, and manually feed that data into the database.

[George K]

Thank you so much for all your efforts, @Klaus !

[Klaus]

Damn, I'm glad that I finally got it to work again. I couldn't let the prejudice that CS academics have no clue about how to operate computers in the real world win

[LuFins Dad]

But I’m not finding the thread where I was voted the smartest, most talented, and best looking man on the forum…

Still, it’s nice to have 99%! Good job, Klaus!

[89th]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Welcome back!:

Nice going, Klaus - and thanks for all your work on this.

I think we should award you a 100% pay-raise!

Make that 200%!

[89th]

I keep telling you all Twitter is bad!

@Klaus nice work man, I know that was a PITA.

BTW... does this mean I have 3 Reputation now? No more waiting 120 seconds!

[Mik]

[Horace]

Thanks for all this, Klaus!

[kluurs]

Seriously, this was a lot of work and it's apprecaited.

[Klaus]

@Klaus said in Welcome back!:

About profile pictures and uploads - @Axtremus could you maybe manually scan a backup that is at least three days old whether it contains a public/uploads folder or something? Maybe I can restore profiles etc.; I think I have only the backup of the database, but not of that folder (which is where profile images live).

Never mind, @Axtremus - thanks to the AWS command line tools I was able to download the full backups now.

[Klaus]

Ha! Managed to restore the profile pics, too.

[Axtremus]

@Klaus Great, I just saw the earlier request and you've already done it.

[mark]

Excellent work getting the system back online. Thanks Klaus!

[Renauda]

Way to go, Klaus! Thank you.

[Jolly]

@LuFins-Dad said in Welcome back!:

But I’m not finding the thread where I was voted the smartest, most talented, and best looking man on the forum…

Still, it’s nice to have 99%! Good job, Klaus!

I think I found it...but you weren't identifying as a man.

Need a link, Lucy?

[Klaus]

OK, I've now killed the other forum.

From now on, I'm going to use a new workflow for updates: Before updating the main forum, I'll make a clone and test it there. That should hopefully make events like this less likely to occur.

Oh, I also found all file uploads, so all previously uploaded files (such as "copy&pasted" images) should work again.