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Skeptic's Guide forum DOA?

rjh01 said:
Basic rule number 2 of backing up your data is sometimes do a test restore from your backups to make sure they work. Do this without touching the real data.

Basic rule number 1 is do backups.
http://sguforums.com/
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For those who don't want to click:
Yes, it's happened again. Hello. I've just taken a break from bashing my head against the wall to write this, and to wait until my sight returns, the crippling pain subsides and my brain stops hissing at me in guttural French. And these are the unfortunate tidings I find myself reporting: yes, it's happened again, our forum database is knackered.

As you may remember, a while back we lost the database due to an error on our part. As the scantiest of comforts, this time around the fault lies with the hosting company. We're still trying to ascertain exactly what happened ('your database was corrupted in the outage' isn't much of an explanation, yet it's the only one we've been offered thus far) and what can be done.

According to the hosting company, the back-ups of the database have also been corrupted. That seems to run counter to the very bloody point of a bloody back-up, but I've ceased to expect basic competence from these people. Rest assured that regardless of how this all comes out, we shall take our custom elsewhere.

We profoundly regret confronting you, our members, with another deeply annoying setback like this. Wastrel and Belgarath are hard at work to see what can be salvaged. We will keep you posted.

On behalf of the moderation team,

humble, pissed off and with aching head,

Louie
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I've generally found that any time the thought crosses my mind "Hmm, maybe it's about time I should make a backup..." I should make a backup.
 
These forums are hosted on Digital Ocean now. Digital Ocean have a little tick box that says "back my server up every day". Of course, (a) you need to tick that box (and your server costs 20% more if you do), (b) those backups have to work, and to test them you have to create a new virtual server, and (c) if you suffer from subtle database problems rather than bang-you're-dead, you might find that your backups are full of useless bytes.

It's still great progress. Ticking a box and paying the money is a lot easier than keeping to a schedule yourself.
 
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