Data Loss

Hi,

I'm an admin from The Dark City. We seem to be experiencing data loss. Some of our older topics are missing posts for no reason.

Any advice on how to recover the missing data and investigate the matter?

Thanks,

-Mush

Hi,

Try to check to history of moderation on the admin panel, Go to ACP >> General >> Forum >> Security >> below the "Security Administration" click the Moderation. For there you can check who moderate topics/threads.

Thanks for the quick response. I have checked all moderations since the original topic was created. The topics with missing posts show no record of being moderated.

Hmm strange, Let's wait for a staff to see this problem.

How many replies did one of these topics have?

Read this thread and in particular read this quote.

Messages in a subject: 990 messages (once the limit reached, the subject is locked and splitted)

I'm sure someone else had a problem similar to this where the subject wasn't split and posts were being deleted.

Maybe it is about auto-pruning, check it

@Johnny Doc: Checked auto pruning, it's not on.

@Derri: The two threads that I am currently aware this has happened to had about 20-25 posts in them at most. So it wouldn't be to do with reaching the maximum message limit.

Hi,

Are you the Founder of the forum? Would you like to backup the forum? Of course, you'll lose the data that has been posted the last days since these issue. Read more about it here:

https://help.forumotion.com/t64905-how-does-a-backup-work
https://www.forumotion.com/en/utils/

Regards,
Sir Chivas

Sir Chivas™ wrote:Are you the Founder of the forum? Would you like to backup the forum? Of course, you'll lose the data that has been posted the last days since these issue. Read more about it here:

No I am not the founder.

However we are uncertain when these event's happened as the topics are old, but are linked often as they are useful. As a result we have no idea "when" the posts went missing. The only thing we know is "when" we found out the posts went missing. For all we know they might have been missing for a few week, a month or a few days.

Our forum is very busy so losing new data through a backup is not an option.

However what I want to know, is how this data went missing? As it doesn't seem to be anything to do with our end (no admin/moderation logs point to the removal of these posts). In both cases it was the first 2-3 posts of the topic that went missing (i.e the main content).

This is only the data loss we have been made aware of, for all we know more data has been lost and more will be lost.

As a service provider you should be aware that unexplained data loss in unacceptable.

Thanks.

Yes, I'm aware of this. However, since you guys don't know when exactly this data has been lost, I can't report this to TGF since the issue isn't too big. Although, what we can do is maybe ask him if he can checkout your forum's database to check if there has been any issues.

Sir Chivas™ wrote:However, since you guys don't know when exactly this data has been lost, I can't report this to TGF since the issue isn't too big.

That's the biggest problem, is we have no idea of when it happened or how much has gone missing (it might have happened to several other old threads, but we wouldn't know unless they were popular enough to get used often). Someone discovered the missing posts last week, that's all we have to go off. After that I checked all our linked topics and found another topic where this happened.

The only things that might be able to help you are:

-The threads were originally created by my user account.
-The post that went missing was the first post in the thread.
-The post contained images.
-I was recently added to a new user group.
-I recently was given administration privileges.
-My post count is over 2200.
-I have created over 90 topics.
-In both cases the threads still list me as the thread created, however the first post is no longer mine but the post of another user.

Hope that helps narrow it down in some way

Sir Chivas™ wrote:Although, what we can do is maybe ask him if he can checkout your forum's database to check if there has been any issues.

That would be great It sounds like some sort of obscure databasing issue.

Do you remember who started the threads? If you do, you could look at their profiles to see if the threads are listed.

SLGray wrote:Do you remember who started the threads? If you do, you could look at their profiles to see if the threads are listed.

Yes, both threads were started by me. They are both still listed in my profile.

What happens when you press the links for them in your profile?

SLGray wrote:What happens when you press the links for them in your profile?

The first post is still missing when I use the profile link.

Hello,

I suggest the founder/admins to resynchronize the forum first:
https://help.forumotion.com/t50777-resynchronizing-your-forum

That might help in fixing bugs and updates data of the forum, see if it will fix the problem. Thanks

Jophy wrote:I suggest the founder/admins to resynchronize the forum first

We already tried that. Unfortunately it didn't fix it.

Ok, can you post a screenshot of this:

Mushkilla wrote:

SLGray wrote:What happens when you press the links for them in your profile?

The first post is still missing when I use the profile link.

So we can actually see what it looks like, here's a guide:
https://help.forumotion.com/t24814-how-to-take-a-screen-shot

Here's the screenshot from my profile:

You can see the topic is started by me "Mushkilla".

Here you see the top of the first page of the topic, and the first post is by "tlronin" (basically the second post became the first post):


Hope that helps.

Ok, I will report this issue to our main administrator, but since we don't have news about him lately and he's not coming here(he's busy), I think this might take days for him to look into this issue and post here

I will pass the problem, we will need to wait now. Thanks.

Jophy wrote:I will pass the problem, we will need to wait now. Thanks.

Thanks.

hello,

as i already sayed in this topic:

this loss is due to a technical problem dating back to early March. therefore it was necessary to make a backup to recover the disappeared posts. Currently, the problem no longer exists.
However, if you do not backed up you forum, it is normal that you did not recovered the messages

The Godfather wrote:this loss is due to a technical problem dating back to early March.

Did you inform all your customers of this "technical problem"? Or were you hoping it would go unnoticed?

How would one go about making a forum backup? Or getting access to a backup if it exists?

Thanks.

Hello,

Of course a pro admin would inform us of technical problems, however it may not have been posted here, as we lost a pro administrator last March.

You can check the French support forum(located at the right) for technical announcements.

For doing a back up for your forum, please read this:
https://help.forumotion.com/t64905-how-does-a-backup-work

However, doing it will revert back the forum to the chosen date, including the data, theme etc. To explain this, you will lose the members you just earned right now and also the changes you just made, so it's not advisable to do so, since it's been too long to recover the deleted post.

So let me get this straight.

-You didn't inform us of the data loss.
-You didn't even send out an email to all forumotion forum founders informing them about it, so that they could perform backups.
-You expect your non french speaking customers to check the french section of your forum for important technical information and announcements like data loss.

Is the above correct?

----------------------

Is there a way of getting access to the backup, to transcribe the lost information to a text document, without overwriting the current state of the forum? That way at least the lost information could be recovered and re posted as new topics.

Thanks.

Hello,

-You didn't inform us of the data loss.
-You didn't even send out an email to all forumotion forum founders informing them about it, so that they could perform backups.

It may have been informed on the other support forums. I'm not sure about this part, since I'm just a volunteer staff.

-You expect you non french speaking customers to check the french section of your forum for important technical information and announcements like data loss.

This is just a suggestion(of course you can translate the page). However, as I noticed lately, not much of announcements are being made.

Is there a way of getting access to the backup, to transcribe the lost information to a text document, without overwriting the current state of the forum? That way at least the lost information could be recovered and re posted as new topics.

I don't think so.