Fed up. Sick of being patient. My osCommerce site has been down since Friday

[Mimi]

On Friday evening I was deleting an image from my osCommerce site, from within the osc file mgr. I selected the graphic, clicked the little trash can next to the graphic (only) and when it asked me if I was sure I wanted to delete this image, I clicked yes.

Next thing I know, every trace of my osCommerce shopping cart was gone!
I went into cPanel and looked in the file manager ... empty! It was like a fresh directory that had never been used.

Within an hour or two, I realized that everything was really wiped out. I submitted a ticket FAI-2436258 (Friday night) requesting that my site be restored. I don't have any other sites hosted on this account. Just that one.

I know. I know. Where was my own backup? I had been backing up the database regularly, thinking I was backing up my entire website. Not so.

I filled out the restore form, that Hostgator asked me to. I paid the $15 fee as soon as they asked me to. They assigned me a new ticket # IKY-2436499 on Saturday and told me to be patient while they send the ticket to the correct department. The next day, I replied to the ticket saying I was getting worried the backup would get overwritten before my site could get restored. They told me "Your ticket has been moved to Restores in order to better assist you. Someone in this department will be updating you shortly. Thank you for standing by."

Monday morning comes around and what do you know?! The backups were overwritten and restore is not possible!! Hostgator sat on this for 3 days!

I have backups of the database. But I have thousands of dollars invested in modifications. The programmer has provided me with a backup of these files, which I have asked support to tell me if they will work. I've been waiting for 3 hours for a reply. I'M SICK OF BEING PATIENT! I was patient for 3 days, when Hostgator asked me to and I got screwed.

This is an absolute disaster. Can someone please look at my support ticket and try to give me answer about the usefulness of the backup files I referenced? This is downright painful.

And to everyone else: here's a lesson for you. Do a full backup for your home directory often. Because Hostgators "Daily Backups" are worthless to the individual customers.

[slapshotw]

Originally Posted by Mimi

Do a full backup for your home directory often.

This is great advice for everybody on every host. No matter what, keep your own backups. Imagine your hosting company went out of business tomorrow; if you don't know how you'd immediately get back up and running or don't think you'd be able to, you're not doing a good enough job.

[Mimi]

While we are the subject:

When in cPanel,-- Backups: what is the difference between "Generate/Download Full Backup" and "Download a Home Directory Backup?"

Also, why does this screen (in Backup section of cPanel) say "Backups Not Enabled" on the upper left?

[slapshotw]

A full backup includes everything about your account, including the quota settings (for the server administrator), filters, mail, DNS settings, and databases. It can only be restored by a server admin.

A home backup includes all the files you can see in the cPanel file manager and your email. It does not have email filters or databases, or server-wide settings for your account. You can restore it yourself.

[gwyneth]

Classic backup theory, BTW, dictates not just one, not just two, but three backups. Much of the reasoning, but not all, is related to the possibility of media failure--the idea is that if the first backup is hosing, you won't realize it until you destroy the second backup--leaving backup three undamaged (obviously not to be touched until you fix whatever ruined backups one and two).

Back in a software production environment, source code got at least two sets of three backups each, in separate places.

Mimi, any chance of getting some of your stuff back via Google cache or the Wayback Machine?

[Mimi]

Thank you, to both of you for replies. I was bracing myself for a barrage of scathing replies about what a dufus I was for not backing up. I'm equally angry at myself for not doing so carefully enough, as I am at Hostgator for not coming to my rescue. (And giving me false hope all weekend long). I guess I considered Hostgator's system as my secondary backup. Big mistake.

To make things worse, I've been at a trade show all weekend, handing out my business card and marketing materials with my web address on them. It was pretty excruciating when I realized my business contacts were going to find a mess when they went to my site. I had to keep telling myself "Walk away. Forget about it. You contacted Hostgator, now let them do their job." And so, I tried to leave it alone and not be a whiney pest, once I opened up the support ticket.

Not sure if anything could have changed what happened.

Every time I find a good osCommerce expert to help me customize my store, they end up moving on, going out of business, going on a mission to another country... you name it! Hmmm. Is it me?

Anyway, I had to track the last one down and beg him to look for a backup. He had used a sub contractor, who he tracked down, and sent a zipped version of his last copy of my files. It's in an oddly zipped file (7-g or something) and I'm not sure if I can extract it in my directory. I don't know if I will have to re-install osCommerce, and then unzip it? Or if the backup includes all necessary osC files? If I re-install osC from Fantastico, won't it make a new database and not reference the existing one? Worse yet, will it overwrite the existing database with nearly 1000 products? I've got a db backup, but I don't know php well enough to go through all the osC files and modify the paths, etc.

I just want Thursday back!

It makes me sick to think I could spend all week rebuilding the store, and then the PHP5 upgrade next month will come along, mess things up again and send me right back to square one!

Mimi

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by slapshotw

This is great advice for everybody on every host. No matter what, keep your own backups. Imagine your hosting company went out of business tomorrow; if you don't know how you'd immediately get back up and running or don't think you'd be able to, you're not doing a good enough job.

Preach it, brother!

That's not just something I do, it's how I START my site building process.

The machines:
1) Desktop, your design tool.
2) LAN LAMP (Google it), your test bed. (The desktop can run the same software, to stand in place of this.)
3) Live hosting, such as HostGator.


The directories:
Desktop!) C:\doesnt_matter\www\honestlyillustrated.com\
Testing!) /var/www/honestlyillustrated.com/
HostGator!) ~/public_html/


Then you start looking at methods of running backups on all three locations. You don't really want to fill up backup hard drives with thousands of copies of the SAME IMAGE, so you really need to look at solutions that check filesystem file modification dates, and create difference snapshots. That gives you a FULL backup to start with, and a running record of the changes since you started backups on that directory. Long-term, you might then build an occasional backup of the snapshots, so (lets say once per month or three) you have the backup system give you a .zip or .tar.gz of the entire directory on that day.


That's paranoid redundancy.

Originally Posted by Mimi

Anyway, I had to track the last one down and beg him to look for a backup. He had used a sub contractor, who he tracked down, and sent a zipped version of his last copy of my files. It's in an oddly zipped file (7-g or something) and I'm not sure if I can extract it in my directory. I don't know if I will have to re-install osCommerce, and then unzip it? Or if the backup includes all necessary osC files? If I re-install osC from Fantastico, won't it make a new database and not reference the existing one? Worse yet, will it overwrite the existing database with nearly 1000 products? I've got a db backup, but I don't know php well enough to go through all the osC files and modify the paths, etc.

Please, verify my suggestions with support@hostgator.com , or via trouble ticket, before taking them at face value. Their ideas.


Start by removing links to OSC from your remaining pages. You don't want your half-finished work shown to the world while you're working on this particular one.

A phpmyadmin database backup should allow you to restore your database after a reinstallation of OSC.

I would try unpacking that zip file your programmer gave you, on your computer. It's a .7z, right? That's 7-zip. Google it, it's a popular free compression tool.

Reinstall OSC on HostGator, and compare that directory to the one from your 7z file. Then you'll know if you have a full OSC code package in that zip, or if it's just the files the programmer changed. Hope for just the changed files, since that makes over-writing potentially easier.

[Mimi]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

That's paranoid redundancy.

LOL. Good line!

Thank you, whatRevolution, Gwenyth and all, for your help. I definitely have learned my lesson. CYA. CYA . CYA.

I will definitely look into the LAN LAMP program you mentioned. That would be great to be able to test my scripts locally first. Plus, then I would know I have a full working backup.

Hostgator has unzipped that 7z file for me, into my account. It's working, for the most part. Except for some images that were generated on-the-fly by osCommerce as I was entering products into the cart. I guess I assumed that would be part of the database. Oh well, if that's the extent of it, uploading 800 new pictures, I'm perfectly happy with that.

Thanks alot of for your help.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by Mimi

LOL. Good line!

Thanks for warning me! I'll get right on trademarking that... ^_^

Originally Posted by Mimi

I will definitely look into the LAN LAMP program you mentioned.

"LAN LAMP" is an acronym for, "Local Area Network Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP", and the P is interchangeable with "PHP, Perl, Python", etc. Because those languages are sometimes called "P-Code" languages, obviously for their first letter.

Most of us who do such a thing have held onto our aged desktop computers, and put them to use by installing Linux (I chose Debian), and then fitting them with the same software that we find on our production servers such as HostGator.

If you aren't looking to or can't do that, your easier option is using a package that rolls that software into one. For Windows, there are two of those I think you should look at. WAMP and Vertrigo. I've used Vertrigo.

You do have to take note, however, that with the all-in-one option, you have little or no ability to match the software versions of your test environment with the software in your production environment.

Originally Posted by Mimi

Except for some images that were generated on-the-fly by osCommerce as I was entering products into the cart. I guess I assumed that would be part of the database.

No, the images SHOULD be files on the filesystem. SOME software does put data like that into their databases, and that's wrong.

References to the file names, locations, and product relevance, SHOULD be in the database, so if you're using the backup restored database, make sure the file names and locations are still the same.

[gwyneth]

Mimi, when things get back to normal, there's a very useful thread in this category:

100% bullet proof hosting - Zero Downtime (for cheap) - HostGator Peer Support Forums

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

Mimi, when things get back to normal, there's a very useful thread in this category:

100% bullet proof hosting - Zero Downtime (for cheap) - HostGator Peer Support Forums

Did the thread magically disapear?

Originally Posted by vBulletin Message

Invalid Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

[eLIANT]

The thread's probably still around, but since the forum was renamed, the link may not be valid.

The same info is in the wiki (see my sig below)

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by eLIANT

The thread's probably still around, but since the forum was renamed, the link may not be valid.

The same info is in the wiki (see my sig below)

Renaming vBulletin forums, changes thread ID numbers?

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Did the thread magically disapear?

Originally Posted by eLIANT

The thread's probably still around, but since the forum was renamed, the link may not be valid.

The same info is in the wiki (see my sig below)

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Renaming vBulletin forums, changes thread ID numbers?

Actually, it did disappear. I'm guessing Serra, who started the thread and offered the advice, may have deleted it.

I hope the info in the wiki picked up the updated stuff both Morley and a couple of others added to the thread.

[whatrevolution]

Wiki entry looks like a complete enough recommendation.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Wiki entry looks like a complete enough recommendation.

The wiki is more up to date than the old thread and it is easier to keep up to date.


On the backup issues. The thing to remember is that HG keeps disaster recovery backups. That means that if something happens to the server, they will likely be able to restore the system. The problem is that disaster recovery backups are often not perfect.

Backing up the database should be done often, as Mimi was doing. This is very important because it keeps transaction records for sales. The whole site should be stored locally, but ftping the files down to the local machine for file recovery. That means if you delete an image you needed, you can just ftp it back up quickly.

Also a master copy of the site needs to be stored as well. This can be done monthly on a ecomm site without too much worry. A FULL BACKUP will do the trick.

If you make a lot of changes, then a weekly homedir backup might well be advised as well, but if you are keeping an ftp copy, you don't need the weekly.

NEVER trust HOSTGATOR to restore your files. While they have the best intentions, they don't have very much time and effort invested in your site and their financial risk is the amount of your hosting fee. (VERY SMALL). If you tell them to screw off and go someplace else, how much does it cost them? So little they will not even notice. If you can't restore your store, how much does it cost you?

Finally, if your store is making money and it is making more than $300.00 a month in profit, then you should move it to its own dedicated server. You'll find that the dedicated has much less problems and a OSC site on a small dedicated server will FLY! It will be the fastest shopping experience for your customers you could ever hope for.

[Mimi]

Originally Posted by Serra

The whole site should be stored locally, but ftping the files down to the local machine for file recovery. That means if you delete an image you needed, you can just ftp it back up quickly.

Also a master copy of the site needs to be stored as well. This can be done monthly on a ecomm site without too much worry. A FULL BACKUP will do the trick.

If you make a lot of changes, then a weekly homedir backup might well be advised as well, but if you are keeping an ftp copy, you don't need the weekly.

This is all really important advice. I wish this thread could be made sticky, (minus my original post and angry title). Other people could really be saved a lot of grief if they read all this.

I remember reading "Backup your site!" often. I knew how to backup a web page, and the graphics to go with it. But whenever I'm dealing with a script or a dynamic page... I kinda knew I was going to be in trouble if it got wiped out. I didn't know how you could possibly backup paths and permission settings, etc. All the stuff that would be a nightmare to try to duplicate, if it had to be done all over again.

That's why things like updating scripts, or the upcoming PHP changes give me a panicked feeling. I have no idea how to troubleshoot a php script.

This piece of advice is really exciting to me:

Originally Posted by whatrevolution

Most of us who do such a thing have held onto our aged desktop computers, and put them to use by installing Linux (I chose Debian), and then fitting them with the same software that we find on our production servers such as HostGator.

Because, I do have an un-used desktop that I could devote to testing my websites. I often don't attempt adding contribs/mods to my OCS site because I'm afraid of "messing things up" on a site that is working fine. It's really exciting to think about learning to tinker with the site myself, and know I'm not messing with my live website.

Thank you very much for all the great replies. This has been very helpful!

[Sabertooth]

Greetings!

Originally Posted by Mimi

This is all really important advice. I wish this thread could be made sticky, (minus my original post and angry title). Other people could really be saved a lot of grief if they read all this.

Mimi, you have absolutely zero to be ashamed of your original post or title. In fact it's just what someone with a similar problem might look for. Unfortunately while you can lead a horse to water, it's only after he's been in the desert a while that he's guaranteed to drink. IOW, folks may read the thread but they won't get religion until they're burned. Welcome back from the desert, BTW.

These are some great ideas! Kudos to whatrevolution, gwyneth and others. The wiki advice is super!

Kevin

[Serra]

Originally Posted by Mimi

Because, I do have an un-used desktop that I could devote to testing my websites. I often don't attempt adding contribs/mods to my OCS site because I'm afraid of "messing things up" on a site that is working fine. It's really exciting to think about learning to tinker with the site myself, and know I'm not messing with my live website.

Thank you very much for all the great replies. This has been very helpful!

I backup my full server to an unused desktop. I have backups of the backups. An employee of mine was told that they needed to be careful because they were working with the "only backup" of the system. She deleted it by mistake after a system crash which wiped out all of the data. She told me, "I know you said it was the only backup, but I know that you have a super secret backup hidden some place, right?".
Of course, I had the backup and the backup of the backup....

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by Serra

Of course, I had the backup and the backup of the backup....

Ta dah! The triple backup principle.

It's really safest to just forget that HG's "backup" even exists--that's why I put quotes around it. There was a very, very long painful thread several months ago about backups that got into a discussion about several inexpensive backup firms.

[slapshotw]

I use BQBackup and Dreamhost as cheap places to store backups.

[whatrevolution]

Originally Posted by gwyneth

It's really safest to just forget that HG's "backup" even exists

backups?

[gwyneth]

Mimi,

This link is a step-by-step guide to getting your LAMP server up. The site either has the whole package to download, or links to it. Obviously for a non-networked machine, you could ignore the email/firewall stuff.

Quick Linux Server w/ Apache+PHP+MySQL+MailServer+PhpMyAdmin+Webmin+FTP Server+Webalizer+Firewall

[whatrevolution]

Then you can go scramble your brain with too much information!

^_^

[Mimi]

Originally Posted by Sabertooth

Welcome back from the desert, BTW.

Thank you very much. It was miserable trip.

You are so right about not getting it, until they are burned. I'm backing up like crazy now. One thing I can't figure out, is how, once I've generated a full backup (the kind only the host can really use), is how to I download it to my computer? It gets saved outside the www/ directory by default, I guess.

I remember I just let some fields blank, when I filled out the page to start generating the backup. Maybe those were important.

I don't see a way to download in cPanel.

I guess I could alter my Dreamweaver FTP connection settings. Or download WS_ftp. But isn't there a way that you just access it from your browser and it automatically initiates a download, if it's a zip or tar file?

Is there a danger if I drag the backup into the www folder?

I looked at those links to the LAMP server information. Oh God, that is intimidating!