Where’s Everything Gone?
November 15th, 2006 by Mark Rittman
Well… a couple of people mentioned to me today that my website was down. Fine, I thought, there’s sometimes a glitch with the hosted server, and if I just raise a support ticket they’ll restart the mySQL server or at worst, restore from a backup.
Except… it turns out their monthly, weekly and daily backups didn’t include my mySQL databases, as the backup had been misconfigured.
So … that’s all the content of this site lost. Around 700+ postings, all the comments, all the pages, all the links, all gone. Nice one. I’ve managed to recreate the wordpress database and put up this initial posting, but as for all the old content, it looks like it’s gone. As will I be, when I sort out a new hosting provider, but until then, sorry folks, all the old stuff is no more.
UPDATE: It’s all still lost, but I’ve managed to copy a few recent pages from blog aggregators such as biblogs.com. When I get back from the UKOUG, I’ll try and restore a few more, but all the old stuff is still lost, unless any readers have got copies of any old articles they’d like to see restored.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Oh man,
I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how you feel
You are one of my favorite reference for a long time.
But! There should be some backup! MySQL database is plain files with .MYD, .MYI extentions so they might do files backup and that could include mysql.
Oracle has bunch of your articles and probably some guys as well. I’ll send you some of your posts that I saved locally.
I think would be fare enough if your readers help you to restore at least recent posts.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Mark,
What a nightmare! However all might not be lost *just* yet, it should be possible to recover quite a few of your pages from the Google cache, for example go to google and type in ‘www.rittman.net’ and choose the ‘cache’ link should give you the last cached version of your home page that Google has, also to get back sub pages you can type in ‘cache:http://www.rittman.net/category/application-server/’ into the Google search field to get back the cached version of a particular URL.
If you’re quick you might just be able to get some of your pages back before Google updates it’s cache.
Hope this helps mate.
John.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Mark, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine may help:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://rittman.net
November 15th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
You can get some (most perhaps) of it back via the waybackmachine:
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rittman.net/
It looks like you can get back to March 2006.
They accept donations (non-profit and tax deductible if applicable): http://www.archive.org/donate/
November 15th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
Mark, very sorry to hear this - your website has always been the first place I turn to for information on Oracle BI and DW.
Just as a question - any chance you have the old backups you did before you did the last major overhaul on this site (maybe 3 - 4 months ago it seems like)?
Best wishes,
Scott
November 15th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
You might be able to find some of your old articles from here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rittman.net
November 15th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I am so sorry
Well I was hoping to look up some information on the Siebel Analytic Server on your site (I haven’t been able to find a downlowd of it at edeliver) - All edelivery has is the Siebel CRM Application Suite and was wondering if the Analytic Server was part of it. Tried the site a couple of times this morning - and though that I probably had it bookmarked incorrectly.
I am so sorry, I hope you will be able to recover the conent.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Sorry Mark,
In this situation, as in many others, Google is your friend: site:rittman.net. Look for the cached version.
You will also find archive.org very handy.