Comments on: When Backups Fail

By: 10 Tips when changing Blog Platforms | YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:05:47 +0000

[...] recovering from the backup disaster last week and after switching into a new blogging platform from Expression Engine (EE) to WordPress [...]

By: Bangis

Bangis — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 16:58:13 +0000

Maybe this software can help:

http://www.cpsitesaver.com

Its a backup tool for cPanel.

By: luv2ride

luv2ride — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 15:10:42 +0000

Can I assume by this article you were able to recover some of your data but not all? Did you actually make the conversion to wordpress and import all the data you had left from EE? If so would you care to share how you did the import and conversion. I would love to get all my EE data imported to Wordpress.

By: » 10 Tips when changing Blog Platforms @ Ambot ah! [ technology news and reviews ]

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 01:12:42 +0000

[...] After recovering from the backup disaster last week and after switching into a new blogging platform from Expression Engine (EE) to WordPress (WP), I realized ti would be nice to share some of the things we learned from that migration process. [...]

By: demonhale

demonhale — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:23:22 +0000

by anychance a weblog be backed-raw by copying the files on your public folder then restoring it later, and all the way downloading a db backup on your cpanel and restoring it too?

If that isnt the case, well better use a flatfile instead…

By: yuga

yuga — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 06:34:07 +0000

I sent out a bug report (if indeed it is) to cPanel developers. Also I have reverted back the PHP version to 4.3.x from 4.4.x as EE was not compatible with it. Found that out when I upgraded PHP where PinoyBlog was installed a week back.

Ahhh… I need sleep. The last 48 hours was a nightmare.

By: pisces-iscariot » of failed backups and stressed sassy lawyers

pisces-iscariot » of failed backups and stressed sassy lawyers — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 06:32:56 +0000

[...] Yuga of Yugatech.com blogged about Sassylawyer’s ongoing backup woes recently, and Ms. Connie has written about it as well (that link is bound to change as her blog isn’t fully online yet and she put up a static page for the moment). [...]

By: gabriel

gabriel — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:51:39 +0000

man what a nightmare that must be. ms. connie must be all nerves right now.

From your description it seems that something happened between the time of the working backup to present that usually requires some update to the db and/or the sql file. If nothing of the sort happened, then that means someone goofed and just changed the schema without telling anyone, hence making backups useless.

btw its certainly not the first cpanel horror story i’ve heard. anyway good luck.

By: mell ditangco

mell ditangco — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:36:12 +0000

hey yuga that is scary stuff! i installed a backup plugin too, but i could not make it work!
yikes!

By: vern

vern — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 13:29:09 +0000

Backups from the console or if you don’t have access to it, using phpmyadmin work best.

By: Manuel Viloria

Manuel Viloria — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 13:18:14 +0000

Thanks for the info, Abe. Looks like I shouldn’t throw out those old static html blogging packages. It’s easier to make back-ups of those given cPanel quirkiness.

By: yuga

yuga — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:36:03 +0000

Yay, yes. We’re only upgrading to the latest stable version of cPanel, no less, so this could be a major bug or something if it’s true.

By: kzap

kzap — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:21:56 +0000

thats scary then if cPanel is not backing up all the tables….

By: yuga

yuga — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:10:32 +0000

The compressed backup is just actually 300MB but the total files of the restored account is abour 1.8GB. The total mySQL data is just in the region of 250MB.

My theory is that cPanel may not be completing the backups or something.

@ Manuel

Could happen to any web app with that figure.

By: yuga

yuga — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:03:09 +0000

She did an EE backup last night. It didn’t went thru smotthly so she asked that I restore to the lastest daily backup. When I did, it wouldn’t work as well. We asked help from EE support and they found out that some of the tables in the EE db were missing.

I then tried the weekly backup (done 5 days ago). Didn’t work. I tried the monthly – didn’t work as well. There wree all missing the tables, esp. the blog entry table. I checked the individual mySQL files and tried restoring them from SSH but a 170+ MB DB only came out 90+ after restore. I opened the mysql file and check on the entries and it was missing the blog entry tables.

Last August, before we moved the acocunt to a dedicated server, I left an old cPanel backup. That one came out fine.

By: Manuel Viloria

Manuel Viloria — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 10:53:34 +0000

Wait… the latest daily backup did not work, but the 3 month old backup did?

Does that mean the issue is with the data backup integrity and not with EE?

By: Manuel Viloria

Manuel Viloria — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 10:50:56 +0000

Hi Abe… Is this scenario (missing tables in DB) also possible with WordPress, assuming also a 2GB cpanel backup?

By: kzap

kzap — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 10:47:29 +0000

So what failed? the cpanel backup? no weekly backups?