Corrupted forum posts

doubting_thomas · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 3:49 pm Post subject: Corrupted forum posts

A large number of old forum posts were corrupted in the database during the week of June 3rd. This was the week of another DoS attack against this site. How this happened precisely is not known, but it is presumed that the database manager crashed during the attack, causing the posts text table to become corrupted.

You'll recognize one of these corrupted posts because all of the text characters have been replaced with the same "box" character.

It appears at this time that all of the corrupted posts are old (2004), but it also appears that there are more than 50,000 such corrupted posts. We've confirmed that these posts were not corrupted in backups taken before the week of the DoS attack.

We can selectively restore those posts from previous backups of the forum database. However, this is far too many posts to attempt to restore manually. We will need software to automate the process. We are trying to find software that has already been developed that can handle this task, but there's a strong possibility that we will have to develop a custom program for the job.

I'll post updates about this situation in this thread. In the meantime, please don't post notices or send PM's to the moderators alerting them to this problem - they are very much aware of it. Also, please don't post longs lists of links to affected posts. We already know which posts are affected.

doubting_thomas · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:57 pm Post subject:

Update: Whale has used his programming skills to develop a script to repair our forum database. The script identified all of the posts containing the "box" characters, and then repaired them using text from an uncorrupted backup of the forum database. The script appears to have worked, and all of the corrupted posts have now been repaired.

There does appear to have been one minor side effect - posts that contained any of those box characters, and which were NOT in the backup database, may have been cleared by the script (i.e., no text). This will probably only affect posts which mentioned the corrupted posts problem, and which quoted any of those "box" characters. My own original post above was affected, but I've replaced the text in it (without the "box" characters this time).

I'm removing the sticky from this thread, and presuming this problem has been resolved.

Thanks, Whale!

Whale · Joined: 18 Apr 2005 Posts: 1272

You're welcome! Oops for the side effect. Hopefully it wont be a big problem.

ixolite · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:39 pm Post subject:

Hurray for Whale! Well done!

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Ariel · Joined: 09 May 2004 Posts: 5451 Location: The Netherlands.

Thanks Whale
Great work.

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yeezevee · Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 17109

IoshkaFutz · Joined: 16 Feb 2004 Posts: 3895 Location: Caput Mundistan

Thank you DT and Whale!!!
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peacebewithyou · Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 1646 Location: India and USA

thanks buddy

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Whale · Joined: 18 Apr 2005 Posts: 1272

I was glad to help. I was doing it so we could get back the forum posts to import into the wiki later on.