| Restoring
Deleted, Lost, or Corrupted Data
Recovering
from a Lost Database
Using Export/Import to Fix a Corrupted
Database
Recovering Deleted Folders or Discussions
Recovering Deleted Messages
Troubleshooting
Resources
Recovering
from a Lost Database
In the
event of database loss, it's possible to recover using your webxdb.1
and webxroll.1 files. See Backup
Information for more detail on webxdb.1 and webxroll.1
files.
This
is how:
- Shut
down the Web Crossing application if it's running.
- Rename
or move the old webx.db file (don't delete it in case
it contains useful information)
- Copy
the most recent backup database (name it webxdb.1) and
the corresponding roll-forward log (name it webxroll.1)
into your webx directory.
- Restart
the Web Crossing server.
- Web Crossing
will create a new webx.db file by combining the webxdb.1
file and the webxroll.1 files
- For
each 1000 items processed, progress will be noted in the log.roll
file.
- If
your webxroll.1 file is very large (many megabytes) it
can take quite a while (minutes > hours) to process the information.
- When
the process is finished, Web Crossing should respond and function normally.
If you
need to edit the Web Crossingroll file, you can do it with a text
editor. It's just an ASCII text file. You can also combine two
or more Web Crossingroll files if necessary. You will need a text
editor which allows you to work with very large (several megabyte)
files. Simply add the contents of the more recent roll-forward
logs in order (from oldest to newest) at the bottom of the oldest
roll-forward log.
Rename
the file webxroll.1. Name the matching database backup
file webxdb.1 and place both in the webx directory.
Proceed as you would to recover a lost database.
| Note:
If some isolated event occurred which corrupted the database,
you can edit the webxroll.1 file to remove that last
event, more or rename your webx.db file, and then have
Web Crossing recreate the database. |
Using
Export/Import to Fix a Corrupted Database
If you
suspect your active database and backup databases are corrupted,
and are using Web Crossing 3.1 or higher, you can use an Export/Import
procedure to fix the corruption.
This
is how:
- Go
to the Control Panel > Export >
Export entire site
- Take
note of the name of the file that's created, and leave it in
your webx directory
- Stop
Web Crossing
- Rename
or move the following files:
- webx.db
- webxdb.1
- webxdb.2
(and any others)
- webxroll.1
- webxroll.2
(and any others)
- webx.idx
- Start
Web Crossing, access it, and answer the initial setup questions.
It's important to install a certificate at this point,
or you won't be able to import your whole database if you're
running something other than a Bronze version.
- Log
on as sysop and delete the Guided Tour. This is important
so unique ID numbers can be preserved within your import file.
- Go
to Control Panel > Memory usage
and give Web Crossing at least as much memory as the old database was
using.
- Import
the file from step 2. This can take minutes > hours to process,
depending on how big your database is.
- When
it's completed, your database should be repaired.
Recovering
Deleted Folders or Discussions
If
you have something in the deleted file in your webx directory, you can recover it and put it back in the live areas.
- Retrieve
the file deleted from the webx directory on the
server.
- Open
deleted with a text editor. If deleted hasn't
been discarded for a long time, it may be very large and many
text editors won't be able to handle it. One that will is "Ultra
Edit," a shareware editor for Windows that can handle huge files.
For Mac, try "BBEdit" or "PageSpinner."
- Find
and copy the relevant folder or discussion in the file. The
file is in Web Crossing's SGML export
format, which will look familiar to anyone experienced with
HTML. If the file was exported with Web Crossing 3.1 or up, a folder
will be enclosed within "folder" tags, so copy everything
from the leading "<folder ..." down to "</folder>".
To recover a discussion the procedure is the same but discussions
are bounded by "<discussion..." and "</discussion>" tags.
For versions previous to 3.1, the terminology used is <topic>
for a folder and <conversation> for a discussion. (You
can still import tags using the old terminology into a new version
of Web Crossing and it will work fine.)
- Save
what you copied as a new text file, and put it back on the server
in the webx directory.
- Import
the saved file.
- Note
that if any discussions, folders, etc. have been created between
the time your recovered item was deleted and the time you re-import
it, the uniqueID numbers
of the imported discussions and folders will be different -
thus any internal bookmarks using uniqueIDs will not work.
In
older versions, tags are labeled "topic" and "conversation" because
early versions of Web Crossing called folders "topics" and discussions
"conversations."
Recovering
individual deleted messages
Individual
deleted messages are not saved in the deleted file on the
server. However, you can recover individual messages by exporting
the entire discussion in which they appeared.
- Open
the export file in a text editor and do a search for the word
"deleted." Deleted messages will begin with a string
that looks something like this:
<MESSAGE DELETED AUTHOR=01F6E202 DATE=07/12/1999.11:32:22...
- Take
out the word "deleted" in the message or messages
you want to recover.
- Save
the file and put it back in the webx directory with a unique
file name.
- Then
delete the entire discussion and and reimport
your edited version, and the deleted message(s) will reappear.
Troubleshooting
I've
been waiting a while, and I don't know if it's working right,
re-rolling the database.
- If
you're rolling a database from a webxdb.1 and webxroll.1
files, check the log.roll file for progress, details,
or problems.
How
can I find out if the import went OK?
- Check
the impReport (an HTML file) when the import is finished, for
details or any problems.
Resources
Sysop
Documentation
Sysop
Control Panel
Web Crossing
FAQ
|
