vBullletin - Corrupted MySQL records!

[Steve_S]

I'm posting this in the hopes that it may help others. I still like vB but the following concerns me a great deal.

As many of you know, yesterday the dedicated server that hosts this UBB must have hit a bad disk sector during my .tar/gz session and a soft reboot would not bring up Apache. The box required a cold boot from the NOC and during this period our UBB "appeared" to loose thousands of posts and two member records were corrupted.

Since UBB is a flat file DB it required an update of threads, index, and rebuild the count. Then a search for zero byte member records and reconstruct these two member records from backups. About a 30 minute procedure to bring our UBB back to it's original state after Apache was running properly.

I have checked every script on all the domains on this server which includes the MySQL version of Hyperseek. They are all fine except for vB.

I have a corrupted vB (1.1.5 - NO hacks) MySQL records and Admin as well as the BB will not load. All I see is code. This vB has been closed for months and only my cookie set browser lets me see and post. It was closed durimg our server glitch. It worked fine up untill this server glitch. No one was on or could have been on vB.

I find this a fasinating experience to see what happens side by side and hope you can tell me exactly how I would recover/fix the MySQL records without reverting to a week old backup?



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Best regards,
Steve_S
Your Administrator

[singloon]

steve .. i can help most likely since i hold the vB record for the most mysql vB related problems with my old host http://geekvillage.com/ubb/smile.gif

if you like you can email me at george@eva2000.com if you want

when you mean not load do you mean you get nothing or any error messages (if you look in the source code of the page) ?

first things first is if you can backup the actual mysql database files (copy them to a safe location) then do that first

next what version of mysql are you using 3.22.x or 3.23.x ?

then take a good read of this thread on mysql corruption and repair by Joe Eng (who helped me with alot of my mysql problems - great guy) -
http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=3944

DON'T follow any of the steps yet just familiarize yourself with them

you can probably recover and restore your forum database using isamchk (3.22.x) or myisamchk (3.23.x) but i have never had a hard disk failure so not sure..

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[This message has been edited by singloon (edited 02-02-2001).]

[Ted S]

Steve,
As much as I know you want to make this a vb issue, it's not. Mysql is one of the msot stable types of databases on the web but when a hard drive sector goes bad, espcially a sector on a ide hard drive, if mysql is touched, mysql is effected. It's kinda like having a house with termites, if the termites start eating, you will have a problem with the foundation but it can be fixed. Mysql has a whole set of internal commands to deal with data corruption. http://www.mysql.com/doc/C/r/Crash_recovery.html deals with recovering froma crash, http://www.mysql.com/doc/R/e/Repair.html deals with fixing tables, http://www.mysql.com/doc/C/h/Check.html deals with checking for table errors.

As annoying as this problem is, you can hardly blame vb or any other software, even mysql its self. The truth is, a badsector leaves a hole in your hard drive. Why this happened to vb and nothing else makes no sense but like you said, no one was on vb, nothign was using it and therefore it wasnt active.

If all you are ssing is code instead of php files, it sounds more like apache lost your php file info than mysql messing up. A hard reboot always causes porlbmes, teh question is simply what messes up and what is left untouched. I've had some servers blackout and come back up to have no problems with mysql or vb, where as others can't even execute perl. It's an odd place in the server world but with no one on vb, vb not even actively running and a major server reboot, it's hardly fair to blame anything for the problems.

[Steve_S]

My appolagies for not responding sooner to this thread and thanks for all the great advice.

TED is geek of the WEEK or perhpas "His Royal GEEKNESS" or as they would say on the other side of the pond, HRG http://geekvillage.com/ubb/smile.gif

I went back and looked again and again. It appears NOT to be a vB/MySQL issue. My appolagies again for sending up the flag. When the box was rebooted php did not load and Apache just lost track of the bloody thing. Like T said, this can be very complex stuff. Live and learn.



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Best regards,
Steve_S
Your Administrator
Read what our Members think of geek/talk.

[Ted S]

http://geekvillage.com/ubb/smile.gif

It's ok Steve, after all, I only know these things from kicking a few too many power cords http://geekvillage.com/ubb/smile.gif

[singloon]

Steve, everything okay on the vB/MySQL side of things ?



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