[nukeadmin]

Well im off to kip, as running on empty after only 4 hrs sleep last night, so here is the update thus far:-

The server has been secured and patched etc by an outside contractor.

Backups have been configured from new boot drive onto new backup drive (Both different manufacturers to last time !!!)

Offsite backup configured via passive FTP

I have had sooooo many offers of assistance its amazing, and most excellent of all they are from other websites as well, special thanks to Touring and Tenting and SBMCC sites who emailed me with offers of assistance.

I have also had an excellent response from members with either financial contributions now totalling near the £400 mark and offers of technical assistance and hardware offers of varying types of which i will be taking up offers for some of them in the future to provide a much more robust system for the future.

Both of the old drives are now in the hands of the Specialists and i hope to hear back tmrw whether it is worth pressing on with full recovery or not, so fingers crossed overnight

As i am sure you are all aware the site has been devloping nicely over the last 2 days, i now have the base framework in place and comparatively bug free, thanks in part to a friend of mine (Thanks Stuart) and my hard graft.

We now have working forums, and i have also uploaded some of the old directories/databases in the background so hopefully will have them up and running by tmrw.

I have selected a shortlist of two new themes for the site called Kashmir and Aphrodite to replace this rather bland and hard on the eyes default theme. The only issue is that both of these themes require a mass amount of work to support some of the enhanced functionality that the default theme allows such as adding attachments to posts, showing recent topics at the top and more. I will select one of these themes and work on it in the background improving it slowly until finally complete then i will make it the sitewide theme. If anyone wishes to use them in the meantime then fire away bearing in mind they may break at any moment with me fiddling with them I estimate a few weeks before the theme will be finally sorted.

The front page block is now up and running showing the last 30 posts and even links properly to them thanks to Stuarts terling efforts tonight

The gallery is back in operation, just sorting out Chris with his admin rights.

ANyways i must retire for the night before i drop. Hopefully i can start adding more content tmrw and get the site more and more functional.

Thank you all for your kind words and understanding during this difficult transitional phase, but MHF will come out of this in a better state in the end.

Dave.

 

[peejay]

Thanks for the update Dave, and go and get some deserved kip, you've earned it.

When you wake up though...


I do think it would be good if you could maybe update all your members as to exactly what has occurred over the past few days, people have been left high and dry wondering exactly whats going on, myself included, with no idea as to what has happened.

I know you're a busy man getting things back to normal but I think we all want to know what the score is, good or bad, you have a lot of loyal people here who will support you in this difficult time but please keep us in the picture, and more importantly, an update on what exactly went pearshaped would be most appreciated.
Then we can work round it and get back to normal(ish) :wink: .


pj

 

[88915]

Thanks, dave, much appreciated. As Peejay says, it would be appreciated if there was something on the front page as to whaht is happening.


Did you get my e-mails on sunday? The system seemed to have chucked them back at me.

 

[nukeadmin]

hi gang, firstly no i didnt get any emails Mike, when the server went offline due to the faulty drives i lost all my email access at the same time. I have manually activated your bognormike account so you should be able to login with that again now.

As for the updates Peejay i did put some on the old temp forum, but it all boils down to the boot drive in the server malfunctioning hence the perfromance issues encountered over its last few days. We did notice this and ordered a replacement drive in advance. We thought that having a backup drive in the server which kept all the data in a second place would give us redundancy in the event of the primary drive going completely faulty, however this wasnt so, for some unknown reason the main drive had whats deemed a catastrophic failure whereby the computer server wouldnt even recognise it was there, the second drive had different symptoms in that the server recognized it but thought it was blank. We ascertained that the partition table was corrupt, the contractor managed to recover the partition from a backup copy held on the drive and carry out whats called a FSCK scan of the drive which attempts to recover bad sectors and get access to the good data again. This however wasnt effective and left us with a few files of no use.

We still have no idea as to why the drives failed as they were only 4 months old. The host company who removed the drives did say they were extremely hot. I have no avenue for repercussions as all hard drives are guarranteed to fail with a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) allocated to them. THe hardware is under warranty but the manufacturer wont cover against data failure.

I asked the specialist data recovery company what they thought and they said that those particular drives which were Maxtor Diamond PLus Max 9 160Gb drives had a fairly normal reputation and the only thing they can think of is that the main drive had a major problem with heat etc of some description and due to the close proximity of the drives crammed inside a server may have caused issues on the other drives electronics. This is why we are semi hopefull of retrieving some data as it may simply be the electronics have been fried somewhat. Only time will tell

I apologise if the members feel left high and dry, this has been devestating to me perhaps more than anyone as there was 1.5 years of my blood, sweat and tears on those drives, not only for MHF but also my actual livelyhood as i run other websites which generate income. At present my income level has dropped to 0 this is obviously stressfull enough.

I am working all the hours i can, Julie and i have cancelled any and all plans to concentrate solely on working on this, and i have garnered the help of a fellow coder friend.

I will do "EVERYTHING" i can to get the sites back up to a resemblance of before the problems. I have copies of all the different database/directory front ends, just need to spend a little time converting them over to this new interface framework. Its the actual content entered by the members that i have not got a backup of. i.e. the campsites, specifications etc and of course the all important forum postings.

I am trying to be upbeat as their are a few small Pros here, the new content framework has some advantages over the old one, it is more secure, has extra facilities not immediately apparent such as the ability to attach files and photos direct in the forums without having to upload to the gallery etc first. Many other advanced facilities to numerous to list here also.
I had plans to upgrade to this in the end, but events being what they are they forced my hand.

"IF" we get some data back from the old site i can import it into this framework. The databases i created will be a simple process, the forum posts a longer one, but it is possible.

Anyways i must get on with doing more work I will add this to the front page as well now and i need to remove the temp forums as well.

Adieu

Dave

 

[johnsandywhite]

Hi nukeadmin. 8O Shame about not being able to get much data back. 8O I am running several Maxtor 120 to 200 Hardrive and they do run very hot. I find it's necessary to run extra cooling fans to cool them down. My son's computer is always going down due to overheating. It is possible to Water cool a system. Might be something to think about. The cooler a system runs the better. Just my thoughts. All the best.

 

[Drummer]

Do you know Dave, I don't understand 25% of all this techy stuff! :roll:
Just want to know I appreciate it!
Fancy appreciating something you don't understand!
Oh God Matron, bring back the screens!

 

[autostratus]

A very brief thank you for bringing us up to date on the catastrophe.
Although you may feel under pressure to get this site up and running to its old standard, my feeling is that we can live with the current site and you should concentrate on your websites which give you an income.

It is most important that you and Julie should have some piece of mind in that area before spending time on your leisure activities

 

[Grizzly]

Hear hear to that Gillian, totally agree. I like the new site and it ticks all the boxes for me. If, when you eventually have leisure, you want to tinker with it then all well and good but meanwhile I'm sure we are all happy campers and very appreciative of your efforts!


G

 

[88991]

Thanks Dave for the hard work, as an IT person myself I understand your problems.

 

[marionandrob]

Overheated computers

Well done for getting the thing up and running again!
I don't really understand all this tech stuff but...........
Our home computer cracked up a few months ago, it turned out the thing had overheated . It turned out that the cooling fan on the power supply had failed.
Our hard drive had cooked and at first would not appear to do anything useful but our tame computer geek friend realised that the hard drive was still spinning
He said " windows operating systems need the drive to spin at a higher speed that the old DOS programming system" switched the computer into DOS mode ( apparently they all still have this lurking somewhere underneath all the windows stuff) and managed to copy all the data files onto another hard drive using " good old fashioned down and dirty DOS programming commands"
Maybe worth a try!!!
Our computer is now very much alive and kicking with some new bits and an industrial strength cooling fan ( the thing now sounds like a hovercraft and I would not be at all surprised to see it hovering 3 inches above the desk one day)

 

[johnsandywhite]

Hi marionandrob. I don't think your idea of using DOS to access the drives will work in this case. I think the drives are cooked. On top of which they use a different operating system to DOS (similar, but different). Dave sent the drives of to experts to try and recover the data. They said it was not possible. :evil: If you read my post above, you will see I mention computers overheating and the need to keep them cool. :wink:

 

[88724]

Hi John

If you re-read Nukes post

This is why we are semi hopefull of retrieving some data as it may simply be the electronics have been fried somewhat. Only time will tell

Not all hope as gone yet of recovering the data.

George

 

[Pusser]

Well done Nukes and a big hand for Stuart who will remain avatarless.

 

[nukeadmin]

Hi Gang, i completely forgot to update you all

Spoke to the Recovery company yesterday afternoon

They said the prognosis for the main drive is good and they should be able to recover a portion of the files on the drive, but cant tell me how many or percentage etc, as for the second drive (The backup drive) they are more unsure about that one.

They have commenced work on the recovery and hope to have some news back early / mid week coming

 

[johnsandywhite]

That sounds like some very good news nukeadmin. Hope we get the maximum recovery.

 

[MOTORHOMER]

That sounds like some very good news nukeadmin. Hope we get the maximum recovery.

very encouraging

Motorhomer

 

[88781]

Glad to hear Dave,..Your efforts aren't going unnoticed mate :wink:

M&D

 

[Road_Runner_644]

Well done Dave

In the course of a week it looks like there will be 500 ish members signed up again. The site is better than before, and if you get some content extracted from those drives, and manage to plonk it back on, the content and information will be the best on the net as it was less than a week ago.

Lesser types would have walked away, or drove off into the sunset .

My sincere appreciation to You and Julie, everyone that has put info back on the site, and not forgetting Stuart no avatar .

Dave

 

[88726]

hi nuke

its great news , anything rercovered is a bonus , we will soon fill in any spaces and im sure nobody expects 100 % . im totally amazed with the speed with which you restarted this site and the temporary site to keep the community connected was genious . like i said before you cant keep a good site down. :wink:

cheers
kenny+stella