Plan A was to clone the drive. The hard drive is apparently clicking away and won’t boot so that it out of the question. My April backup is good but my May backup was fucked up. And all this happened while doing my July. So at best I MIGHT be able to restore from April 20th, 2021. Maybe.

So on to Plan B…I was able to secure a “new to us server” today. She is pre-owned, but much newer than our old one. Old one was a 4 core/4 thread 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM and a SATA drive. New one is 4 core/8 thread 3.5GHz, 16GB RAM, and it’s an SSD. It is also $30/mo cheaper. So server is up and running. I did a test restore of http://www.fundp4tm.com from a backup and it seems to be working so the basic IP propagation and shit should be working. Feel free to give that site a real world test. I am going to need it if I can pull off step two below. =P

I appear to also have restored the P4TM account as well, I think. It is broke as fuck but I swear (I think, lol) everything is there as it was on 4/20. Database appears in tack at that point. But to be honest that all was the easy part. Now I have to find a person trustworthy and discreet enough for me to allow root level site and server access and is a server / vBulletin expert willing to get us running in exchange for legal tender. I will be honest, as much progress as this all is, it still might not work if we can’t find the right guy/gal that can do this….or if it can be done at all.

Plan C hurts bad. That would be, if enough wanted to, starting a new, updated and much simpler/condensed vBulletin. I think I should be able to at least import the “USER” table so it would be like a new forum but all your accounts would be there, I think. It sounds like it would work. lol I know. Proper fucked, but P4TMv2 would live.

Plan D would be to call it. After nearly 16 years it would be weird. =/

I know it’s a pain to create an account here but go ahead and chime in with a comment. Your comments will require approval before showing up but right now I am here checking often and will approve them. I want to know what y’all think on it all. If you have the means, hit fundp4tm please. I promise if don’t end up spending it on the site I will give it to charity or something. 😉 -Chef

1:07am EST: Update. It’s bad. This was the message from support:
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Upon initial inspection, the unit was making audible platter skipping from the hard disk. Unfortunately this disk will not make the clone. Disk to disk clones are fairly intensive on platter drives. Due to the age of the drive, it’s almost guaranteed that the clone will do more harm to the original drive than good. At this point, it’s recommended to perform a restoration from the current backup you have over to a newer system.
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I am thinking BEST CASE is a restore from the last known good backup which was 4/20 oddly enough. My May backup is corrupt, I should have noticed at the time but I didn’t. But even that will have to be on all new server hardware/software and I am pretty sure there will be code compatibility errors up the wazoo, which is well beyond me. I suppose I could do the old restore, then try to contract a freelance vbulletin expert and maybe pay them a few hundred bucks to go through the code and fix that, maybe? I don’t even know if that makes sense. But I do know that usually if you throw enough money at something it can be solved. If this is the case I will be asking for help.

Either way, unless support comes back in a few hours and says they were able to clone the drive or something this is not going to be a pleasant thing, a fast thing, or maybe not a thing at all. I guess if none of that pans out I might be able to at least restore the “user” accounts to a fresh forum install if y’all still wanted a place to hang out? Shit. I don’t really know what to think/do at the moment but I will keep y’all updated here. -Chef


Initial Post:
Database went to shite or the server in general. Not sure yet.
Tried to download a current backup and it was almost half the size it should be.
I have a known good backup but it was from about six or seven weeks ago. =/
The server is very old and it’s not as easy as just moving to new hardware. The forums are old and modified enough that going to a new machine will mean new OS, huge version updates of things like Apache and PHP and I am fairly certain that would break a lot. Well beyond my abilities anyway. Hopefully the scans will run and stuff and everything will be fine like 8 months ago. More when I know more. -Chef