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Installed a mod? Broke your forum? No backup? This might help.

Started by kat, September 12, 2010, 04:57:33 PM

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kat

When you install a modification (mod), you, being a good admin, will backup both your database and your forum. BEFORE YOU INSTALL ANY MOD!

Some admins, though, aren't as clever as you are.

So, they install a mod without backing-up, first.

Oh, dear. The forum's dead. I DON'T HAVE A BACKUP!!!

Well, relax. You MIGHT be lucky.

SMF, being the helpful system that it is, takes a backup, for you.

Trouble is, restoring this backup will only work for the very last mod that you installed.

(You CAN use it to restore older mods, by going through the files in reverse date order, to be honest, but that's a bit involved)

Anyway... How do we restore the backup?

Dead easy!

Using your FTP program, have a look in your forum's "Packages" directory.

In there, you'll find another directory named, you guessed it, "backups".

Now, let's assume, for the sake of this tutorial, that the last mod that you installed was "PM On Registration".

In the afore-mentioned "backups" directory, you'd need the file:

2010-01-26_before_PM_On_Registration_1-0-2.tar.gz

The numbers at the front of the filename are the date that the mod was installed, so they'll be different, for you.

Download that file to your desktop, or somewhere fairly empty of files and dearchive it.

It's a "gz" file.

When you dearchive it you'll be left with a "tar" file.

If you dearchive that, you'll find loads of files and directories.

Upload those files and directories to your forum, overwriting what's there, now. (It'll take a while).

When that's done, Voila! Your forum should be exactly as it was, before you installed the mod!




Next time, backup before installing mods, won't you?  ;)

Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail

K@, I realized this too but unfortunately I have to note that the backups is limited in the sense that it backups ONLY the Sources folder and forum root files and not other folders in the forum.

If a mod is changing for example Themes folder like css files etc, it wont restore them at all. The corrupt installation that have changed anything in the *.template.php files in that folder will not be restored using those backups. This is mainly important to note since a line of code in the template file can also caused site error.

As you have said, be a good admin and do backup before installing any mods or even themes.

I hope that may be, the Themes folder especially, will also be backed up together automatically by SMF forum software in the future.

Norv

Actually the backup should have the Themes files. Not the images - no image, that would make it huge quite uselessly, but templates, css, languages, and scripts, yes.

To-do lists are for deferral. The more things you write down the later they're done... until you have 100s of lists of things you don't do.

File a security report | Developers' Blog | Bug Tracker


Also known as Norv on D* | Norv N. on G+ | Norv on Github

kat

It won't save custom themes, as far as I know.

If it did...

Say you had thirty themes, or so? (Some have even more)

That backups directory would be HUGE!

However, when you install a mod, it doesn't install to custom themes, anyway.

(Note that this is in the SMF v1.1.x forum's support board)

Norv

The backups directory *is* growing huge. :D

Please keep in mind that it only saves "text" files (i.e. php, css, js, etc), so compressing them will really save some space. - and it does compress them.

In fact, it *does* save them for custom themes as well, on 1.1.11 included. Though you're right, I'm not entirely certain they should on 1.1.x... Then again, nothing stops mod makers to make their mod install on any theme of their choice (and include those specific instructions into the mod's package - even though that mostly doesn't happen in practice :)), so I guess it makes sense after all.
To-do lists are for deferral. The more things you write down the later they're done... until you have 100s of lists of things you don't do.

File a security report | Developers' Blog | Bug Tracker


Also known as Norv on D* | Norv N. on G+ | Norv on Github

Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail

Quote from: K@ on September 13, 2010, 03:51:36 AM
(Note that this is in the SMF v1.1.x forum's support board)

Aha! I just note that. But why SMF 2.0 RCx doesn't backup the default theme folder, I mean that simple css, default templates etc... Just a curious...  ::)

Norv

To-do lists are for deferral. The more things you write down the later they're done... until you have 100s of lists of things you don't do.

File a security report | Developers' Blog | Bug Tracker


Also known as Norv on D* | Norv N. on G+ | Norv on Github

Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail

There is none, Norv. I really did restore several backups from Pakacges/backups folder. I even downloaded them to check but there is none.

And about the size. I notices that it back ups everything in Sources folder which is not necessary. A backup can be smaller if only it back ups only the file that have been changed and not others. It is like a restore point and not the whole forum site backup.



Norv

Well as it is written, it doesn't know for sure which changed. Of course it could, though the mod installer may execute PHP code which changes more files than the package declaration says it will. Of course it can be done either way, it's just not something we will do soon, I'm afraid.

About backups not having themes at all: maybe it doesn't find the themes directories for some reason. You may want to see in phpmyadmin the result of:

SELECT value
FROM smf_themes
WHERE id_member = 0 AND variable = "theme_dir";

(where "smf_" should be your smf prefix).
Package manager tries to backup those directories it gets from this query, as far as themes are concerned.
To-do lists are for deferral. The more things you write down the later they're done... until you have 100s of lists of things you don't do.

File a security report | Developers' Blog | Bug Tracker


Also known as Norv on D* | Norv N. on G+ | Norv on Github

Giiyom

Damn this just saved my life. Thanks a lot for being so smart SMF :D
www.QcStarcraft.com
www.QuebecSF.com
[SMF 1.1.11 / SimplePortal 2.3.1]


Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail

Quote from: Norv on September 13, 2010, 07:18:28 AM
Well as it is written, it doesn't know for sure which changed. Of course it could, though the mod installer may execute PHP code which changes more files than the package declaration says it will. Of course it can be done either way, it's just not something we will do soon, I'm afraid.

About backups not having themes at all: maybe it doesn't find the themes directories for some reason. You may want to see in phpmyadmin the result of:

SELECT value
FROM smf_themes
WHERE id_member = 0 AND variable = "theme_dir";

(where "smf_" should be your smf prefix).
Package manager tries to backup those directories it gets from this query, as far as themes are concerned.

Hmmm... So far all my newly created site also have the same behaviour. I have to manually backup my theme folder most of the time. I will test this further on a fresh SMF 2.0 RC3 test site and will update.


wedost.com

You are genius. I got one problem 1 hour before and solve it by my own with the help of this tutorial. My problem was here: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=402768.0

You are genius. Thank you very very much.

Masterd

Quote from: Norv on September 13, 2010, 04:02:48 AM
The backups directory *is* growing huge. :D

That is true. If you have many mods installed, then it can be bigger than 200 MB.

Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail


kat

That directory CAN get hacked into.

So, I always back that up, along with everything else.

Actually, that's not totally true.

I back it up (TWICE), then delete the contents of it.

If I want to uninstall anything, or otherwise fart around, I can just upload it all back.

I tend to keep the same time-stamps on everything, too.

Dunno why. Just seems like the right thing to do. ;)

GirlinGray

I tried to post earlier and it does  not appear to be showing.  My forum is down. I tried using the back up and that is erroring out too.  This is from trying to add the mod Anti Spam Verification Question 1.02. 
That Adams Girl

Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail

Your post have been split from this topic. This is a sticky topic and is not meant to ask for help or support. You'll find your post in a new topic here: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=405933.0


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