Finished upgrading the forums last night. Did not go as smoothly as I'd hoped. Seems we lost about half our members (1100 to start) and ~25K posts (33K to start).
This sux. Now you know why I dread upgrades. Yeah, I have a back-up. Made just before the "upgrade". Tired right now (midnight). Should probably get some rest. (A tired geek is a dangerous geek.) But too upset to sleep.
I may have to re-up files for posts & members from the back-up. The file transfer *did* complete pretty fast for 35K posts. So I think the server may've choked. I probably should've done the transfer in baby step .. instead of que'ing up all 35K at once. (Live-n-learn.)
Other than that (losing many posts and members), the new forum seems to be working okay.
Update1 » I was able to restore several thousand posts via the back-up, but it is incredibly tedious. You can't imagine how bad this suks. So long to restore only a small percentage. Too many files que'ed up choke the server.
So, there's good news. We didn't lose posts, as it appears we should be able to recover them all .. tho it will take a while.
••••• today's entry continues below •••••
Update 2 (3PM) » ALL posts/threads have been restored (from back-up) .. far as I can tell, anyway. See HERE for details. Next » restore member accounts. ~500 missing. Small potatoes compared to 25K missing posts. They're already unarchived .. from the back-up tarball (1.2 gigs).
Update 3 (5PM) » All member accounts have been restored. We're back! (That suk'ed. Glad its over.)
- Lesson #1 » Don't do risky stuff at night. (No matter *how* lucky you might feel.)
- Lesson #2 » Always have a back-up. (Or just shoot yourself before you start. Less painful that way.)
- Lesson #3 » It is easier to install a new/clean forum, than upgrade an existing one.
- Lesson #4 » More posts & more members = more risk & difficulty upgrading
- Lesson #5 » Upgrades suk. (On a *good* day.)
I was up 'til 4:30 .. making sure I could restore posts. Couldn't sleep until I knew that. Now I need a sauna.
My web hosting provider (Lunarpages) says our CPU usage has decreased, but we are still using too much *memory* to be moved off "the stabilization server" .. (where all badboy-sites are banished).
I am also now forwarding the old YaBB 1.4 forum, which we were using as an archive, and cuz search engines knew it better than the new forum (this one). So that should kill a good chunk of our CPU usage .. by no longer having to service those (archived) posts. Now that new forum has been up-n-running since March (upgraded last night), we no longer need the archive forum.
Actually, the term "upgarde" is something of a misnomer here. It would be more accurate to say to we installed a new/clean copy of YaBB 2.2 .. and imported all our old posts/members (from YaBB 2.1).
Oh .. and before I forget .. on TV tonight, a Frontline special, titled » Growing Up Online. A look into the question of how radically the Internet is transforming the experience of childhood. If you miss it tonight, you can always catch it online. Souds interesting.
For more along these lines, here's a Google search preconfigured for the query > upgrade yabb forum software bulletin board message
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