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IMPORTANT: All posts/threads/etc made between 11/6 and 11/9 lost

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by Chip, Nov 10, 2015.

  1. Chip

    Board Member Admin Team Advisor Full Member

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    As it says in the notice above, we suffered a catastrophic data loss tonight.

    In an inexplicable display of ineptitude, our ISP inadvertently pulled offline and wiped our database server, thinking it was a different server. Then, to make matters worse, the equally inept individuals who set up our twice-daily backup strategy inexplicably set it up to backup to the same server where the primary database was stored.

    Thus, when they wiped the database server, they also wiped the backups to the database server that were stored on the same drive as the database server's primary data itself. The level of incompetence here is simply beyond comprehension.

    (Can you tell I\'m angry? :slight_smile: )

    So the long and short of it is... there was a four-day old full-server backup from November 6th, early in the AM. That is what we've restored to. So anything that happened on EC between just after midnight Pacific on the 6th and a few minutes ago (few minutes before midnight on the 10th) has been lost.

    This means all threads created, posts made, wall or blog entries made, new registrations, images uploaded, or anything else... is gone.

    The good news is... the database from the 6th appears intact, and that's what we're running on now.

    So... we just figured it was important to let everyone know why everything is so screwed up.

    The staff will be working over the next 24 hours to do our best to restore any staff-made changes (such as member name change requests, etc) but we may need help. If you see something out of whack with your account, please post an ask-the-staff request and we\'ll get to it as soon as we can.

    Our sincere apologies. Our ISP has promised to "make things right"... whatever that means. :slight_smile:
     
  2. Maddy

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    I think "well, shit" is an appropriate response.
     
  3. Eveline

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    Thank you to the staff for everything you do for us! (*hug*)

    It must be such a frustrating situation to be in, knowing how much you care for the members of these forums. However, in the end, what really matters is that we still have these forums as a home and a place where we can come to and be ourselves and personally I am forever grateful for all the hard work you do to make this such a supportive and friendly place. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:ride:

    (&&&)
     
  4. Alder

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    I agree with really everything said above ^^ Thanks for letting us know about the issue and best of luck with sorting this all out.
     
  5. confuzzled82

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    Might I inquire which provider, so I may avoid them? It seems like we've had more than a few problems lately...
     
  6. Distant Echo

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    Note that friends added have also disappeared...

    And we can only add them as contacts now, not as friends :frowning2:
     
    #6 Distant Echo, Nov 10, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2015
  7. candyjiru

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    Perfectly said~

    Thank you so much for all of your hard work and good luck with everything with this mess~ you can do it!! (*hug*)
     
  8. Spartan 117

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    This is just the worst.

    Knowing Chip, I'm sure he's pointed this out to our ISP already. Here at Empty Closets we sometimes deal with serious situations that are literally life or death. Fortunately, as far as I'm aware, we weren't dealing with anything like that during this period - but if we were, if we lost contact with those individuals and the worst happened as a result... Well I'd be interested to see how they'd manage to "make that right".
     
  9. AwesomGaytheist

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    Not sure if a face palm or even banging my head against the wall accurately conveys the situation right now.
     
  10. RainbowGreen

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    Yup, I wrote about a thousand words in a reply I made and was wondering if I should save it or not. ''Nah, it's posted now, it's fine.''

    Holy crap, what a painful coincidence. I wish I had saved it ;-;
     
    #10 RainbowGreen, Nov 10, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2015
  11. Ihavetojustbeme

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    i noticed my account had to be reactivated and i had to re-post everything and now i have no friends and i lost my blogs and my posts and things on my wall its all gone :frowning2:
     
  12. thepandaboss

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    Yikes... Well that's an understatement. Frankly I'm glad EC itself is okay.
     
  13. Ihavetojustbeme

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  14. Summer Rose

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    Just glad EC is still here. Didn't lose much over the past couple days, so it's no biggie to me either way; do feel bad for the people who were affected in much harsher ways.
     
  15. littleraven

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    Yikes. I'm feeling so many emotions right now.
     
  16. Pret Allez

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    See, if their employees had taken the CompTIA Security+, they would know very important things, like that backups should be tested to make sure they work :wink:, and that they should be stored on separate media :wink:.
     
  17. biAnnika

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    We love you guys! You're awesome!

    As others have said, thank you so much for everything you do.
     
  18. Xanesa21

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    Yeah so many post just dissapear :frowning2:

    I don't even remember all of them.
    But what to do, it's not administrators fault :C
     
  19. Chip

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    They know it well, they're just incompetent. And yes, they'd reassured us multiple times that the backup scheme had been tested and was working. Apparently that wasn't true.

    They had set the backups to backup from our primary database server (let's call it "a") to the primary backup server (let's call it "B"). They were supposed to be have A as a mount on B, where they could copy all the data over. But for some inexplicable reason, they had B mounting on A, which meant that when A went offline, there was no way to read the backups being stored.

    And they pulled the wrong server out of the rack, didn't notice that the wrong server went offline, didn't notice when they had it on the bench that it wasn't the server it was supposed to be, and wiped it anyway. Again, the magnitude of incompetence simply defies belief.

    And this is a host that has an international reputation for really exceptional, very personalized service. To their credit, they woke up the president of the company at home, who called me at 1am his time. But that didn't fix the problem.
     
  20. COPY

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    The night before I made like 3 new threads, and I had to remake my account :bang:
    But it's all good, even though I'm still a noob here and all this happened, I really enjoy the community.