B
badmin
Guest
Hey guys, a damage control update.
UPDATES
Please read all of this before posting. I would appreciate if you keep the signal to noise ratio high, i.e.: replies regarding rebuilding CPM and related questions.
What happened?
As you know, CPM was affected when our host's host was compromised. During this time, CPM and other websites had their files and databases wiped. Due to a poor backup policy (basically, stored on the same machine as the live sites), our hosting provider was not able help us recover the site.
So why September 2008? Our bad - that's the last time we performed a backup ourselves. You can be sure that we've learned from this incident.
As an aside, CPM was not the target of an attack, so relax. Your passwords are not stored in plain text, so anyone looking at the database (like me during this messy cleanup) would have a difficult time figuring them out. This doesn't mean that the password you use for posting on internet forums should be the same as the one you use for your online banking, though!
What now?
Since we don't have any db backups after September 2008, we're relying on a jury-rigged, unintentional backup system - search engine caches. For the last day and change, we've been able to collect all of the news posts from Google, Yahoo, and even MSN's caches. Luckily, we've also had the help of Kiyoko, who provided us with an RSS feed of the last year. We're using this to make sure the restoration of the news posts is complete.
The recovered news posts will be going live hopefully some time tonight.
What's left?
Along with news posts on the front page, there are also content pages (basically anything that doesn't have a date below the title). We've also been able to recover these, but the problem is we don't have a list of them as of before the db loss - we won't know whether it is completely recovered. Hopefully, we'll be able to push out the more recent pages soon. If you guys would like to prioritize the recovery of some content over others, please suggest it in this thread. I (if you haven't figured out by now) am not around much, so I'm working with Kerahna to make sure all the pages are in the right place and so on.
What about the forums?
If you registered after September 2008, please make a new account. Send an admin a PM, if there's a nickname collision and we'll look into it. People who have registered before September 2008 will have to verify using the email address associated with their account during September 2008. Again, contact an admin if you've got a problem.
Recovery of threads is really, really messy. We are still pulling content off search engine caches, but as you can imagine, there's tons and tons of it. They're not as clean as the news posts, since the forum changes much faster day-to-day than the blogging component of the main site. It is unlikely we will be fitting the found threads and posts back into the forum, it would be a large undertaking.
However, after our cache-searching is complete, I'll throw together something you can use to view what we've recovered. It will be a static version of the forums - read only. I'll leave it to you guys to determine which threads are important and cannibalize the content to make new threads.
OH MY GOD THAT'S SO MANY WORDS FFFFFFFFF
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP
What about my postcount?
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
UPDATES- 6 July 2009 03:00 GMT - Front page news posts have been restored to their former glory! Please post if you find problems.
- 6 July 2009 04:10 GMT - Many of the indexes of pages (non-post content) have been restored. This includes:
* Yuki’s Vocalists
* Yuki’s Musicians
* Music Downloads
* Videos
* Discography
* Lyrics + Song Info
* Pictures and Scans
* Future Works/Events
* Recommendations
* Fan Works
* Contact and Credits
* Links
The big thing missing now are the actual lyrics pages. We have the content, and will be updating them. Post broken links as you find them.
Please read all of this before posting. I would appreciate if you keep the signal to noise ratio high, i.e.: replies regarding rebuilding CPM and related questions.What happened?
As you know, CPM was affected when our host's host was compromised. During this time, CPM and other websites had their files and databases wiped. Due to a poor backup policy (basically, stored on the same machine as the live sites), our hosting provider was not able help us recover the site.
So why September 2008? Our bad - that's the last time we performed a backup ourselves. You can be sure that we've learned from this incident.
As an aside, CPM was not the target of an attack, so relax. Your passwords are not stored in plain text, so anyone looking at the database (like me during this messy cleanup) would have a difficult time figuring them out. This doesn't mean that the password you use for posting on internet forums should be the same as the one you use for your online banking, though!
What now?
Since we don't have any db backups after September 2008, we're relying on a jury-rigged, unintentional backup system - search engine caches. For the last day and change, we've been able to collect all of the news posts from Google, Yahoo, and even MSN's caches. Luckily, we've also had the help of Kiyoko, who provided us with an RSS feed of the last year. We're using this to make sure the restoration of the news posts is complete.
The recovered news posts will be going live hopefully some time tonight.What's left?
Along with news posts on the front page, there are also content pages (basically anything that doesn't have a date below the title). We've also been able to recover these, but the problem is we don't have a list of them as of before the db loss - we won't know whether it is completely recovered. Hopefully, we'll be able to push out the more recent pages soon. If you guys would like to prioritize the recovery of some content over others, please suggest it in this thread. I (if you haven't figured out by now) am not around much, so I'm working with Kerahna to make sure all the pages are in the right place and so on.
What about the forums?
If you registered after September 2008, please make a new account. Send an admin a PM, if there's a nickname collision and we'll look into it. People who have registered before September 2008 will have to verify using the email address associated with their account during September 2008. Again, contact an admin if you've got a problem.
Recovery of threads is really, really messy. We are still pulling content off search engine caches, but as you can imagine, there's tons and tons of it. They're not as clean as the news posts, since the forum changes much faster day-to-day than the blogging component of the main site. It is unlikely we will be fitting the found threads and posts back into the forum, it would be a large undertaking.
However, after our cache-searching is complete, I'll throw together something you can use to view what we've recovered. It will be a static version of the forums - read only. I'll leave it to you guys to determine which threads are important and cannibalize the content to make new threads.
OH MY GOD THAT'S SO MANY WORDS FFFFFFFFF
- news posts will be coming back soon
- other front page content will be coming back as well, but we'll need help to figure out what's missing
- forums will not likely be recovered, but you will be able to do some necromancy on static versions of recovered threads
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP
- bug reporting - something messed up? Broken link? Missing pictures? Please post in this thread with the URL and description
- prioritizing recovery - any content posts you would like to see first? Any threads you want to see if we've been able to retrieve so far? Post with as much info as you can, and we'll tell you if we've found it.
- eventually, thread necromancy - we're working on this
What about my postcount?
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Last edited by a moderator:
