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since some people seemed to have missed the original announcement...
Important: Forum Rollback. Read =) Understand... and ask a question
The past few months. Instability, Bugs, Hackages – a very unhappy Hassan
So its time for a history lesson!
Roughly 4 months ago, vbulletin released their new highly rated vbulletin 4.0. Forum Administrators were advised to upgrade their forum asap inorder to utilise the numerous benefits that were introduced with this new version.
So we (i) did. I copied the database, uploaded the new software, and proceeded to do a dry (test) run. Suffice to say, the upgrade was a success, and I submitted the new vb4 forum to the admin group for review. After initial tests everyone agreed that this was pretty cool. Oh how we was so wrong. How I was so wrong :/
We decided to proceed with the upgrade. Due to the size of the database, a few errors occurred which caused the server to crash. As data was being converted between the two softwares, numerous changes took place to the database that left it in a half finished state. So once the upgrade process was completed, There was numerous errors and bugs across the forum. People couldn’t login. The pm bug issue. Broken user cp etc.
So this is where backups should come in. I did a backup, but due to the nature of our previous providers inability to meet our needs, the backup was (unknowingly) not complete. Ergo no backup, no earlier rollback. Nothing.
Suffice to say I have spent the past month or so fixing the above mistakes / failing. We moved to a new faster server, fixed various bugs.. and as of 2 weeks ago, only one bug remained – the dreaded PM Bug. A solution to the PM Bug was found about a week ago. Before it was implemented, the SWRP had a first. We were hacked.
A unknown polish chav decided to hack the database, which then proceeded to delete posts, threads and members across the vbulletin database. To add further insult to injury, he decided to impersonate the FBI and state that our security was weak. ¬_¬
Yeah. Thank you. You made my month even more special. Grats.
So what are we doing?
To finally move on from the various problems we have been encountering recently, we will be loading a backupfile that contains all board information up to the date of Augest 17th. All members, posts, usercp settings, topics etc will be saved up to that point. Everything else will be lost. We will also be reverting back to vb3.
The backup will be loaded onto a second forum. From there we will ask users to simply copy and paste their lost topics & posts from this forum, to the new one.
Remember, you will only have to fill in a 13 day gap. This would be a relatively easy and painless process.
Why we are taking this measure?
Due to the recent database hacking attempts by our resident fbi imposter-douchebag, the database has been damaged beyond feasible repair. While we can manually restore threads, posts and lost members – its simply far too time consuming to manually sort through 8 million database records inorder to fill in the gaps with the backup. Also, if this were to be done, the database would have to be taken offline while the edits and updates takes place.
This isn’t suitable for us
This isn’t suitable for you.
By loading the backup it will keep the disruption to the minimum.
So what do you need to do?
Bare with us. When the time is right (probably wednesday morning), we will swap the forums around, The vb3 forum will take over this one, and this forum (vb4) will move to another URL. The vb4 forum will also be made into an archive to allow all you fine people all the time you need to copy your posts J.
Any questions, feel free to ask and we will attempt to answer them for you.
Ta =)
Hassan