dkerr
February 5th, 2007, 09:36 AM
It has been a hectic day or so....
It all started by a spammer who flooded our private messaging by the hundreds.
So I was trying to set restrictions for that registered users did not automatically get private messaging privilidges, I first ran some sql database queries to empty the system of all private messages, so all former private messages are now deleted. The problem that came up was the notifications of total messages per user was not cleared. I thought I had found the fields within a USER table that contained this data, checked marked/selected these 2 fields and hit empty, however instead of emptying only those 2 fields, it empted the entire USER table of the database, at that point no-one could log on not even me, therefore I could not even get in to deactivate the board to work on it. Anyone trying to log in would get a invalid user name / password message.
I didn't have a recent backup, so I asked the host when the last backup was done, they never gave me the date, but said they do it weekly. (Daily backups are at premium / additional cost which we can't afford), so I asked them to restore only the USER table of the database, they did, and it worked briefly then got an error message.
So I tried to cut my losses, I created a new sql database, so I could leave the old/existing database alone just in case I could savage something later from it, and asked them to install the bakeup of the existing database into the new sql database, as well as give me the file of the backup so I could download a backup also.
They manage in addition to this to repair the USER table and install unto the new database the complete database, the message I got from them is that they think I lost very little in the process, so hopefully there was nothing we lost.
Now I spent the morning running a series of repair / reindexing routines. Counter reindexing.
We seem to have everything back to normal.
Now....
1. All previous private messages are gone.
2. Registered users DO NOT have access to private messaging
3. Registered users are automatically promoted to 'TRUSTED REGISTERED USERS' (which has private messaging privledges) once they meet certain criterea, mainly ? amount of days as a member and ? amount of posts.
Your private message totals will be wrong, as it has the former total, to reset to correct numbers, do this...
Go to private messaging, send a private message to yourself. Then delete that private message from a) your inbox and b) your sent folder, this will reset the total to 0. And back to normal.
Don
It all started by a spammer who flooded our private messaging by the hundreds.
So I was trying to set restrictions for that registered users did not automatically get private messaging privilidges, I first ran some sql database queries to empty the system of all private messages, so all former private messages are now deleted. The problem that came up was the notifications of total messages per user was not cleared. I thought I had found the fields within a USER table that contained this data, checked marked/selected these 2 fields and hit empty, however instead of emptying only those 2 fields, it empted the entire USER table of the database, at that point no-one could log on not even me, therefore I could not even get in to deactivate the board to work on it. Anyone trying to log in would get a invalid user name / password message.
I didn't have a recent backup, so I asked the host when the last backup was done, they never gave me the date, but said they do it weekly. (Daily backups are at premium / additional cost which we can't afford), so I asked them to restore only the USER table of the database, they did, and it worked briefly then got an error message.
So I tried to cut my losses, I created a new sql database, so I could leave the old/existing database alone just in case I could savage something later from it, and asked them to install the bakeup of the existing database into the new sql database, as well as give me the file of the backup so I could download a backup also.
They manage in addition to this to repair the USER table and install unto the new database the complete database, the message I got from them is that they think I lost very little in the process, so hopefully there was nothing we lost.
Now I spent the morning running a series of repair / reindexing routines. Counter reindexing.
We seem to have everything back to normal.
Now....
1. All previous private messages are gone.
2. Registered users DO NOT have access to private messaging
3. Registered users are automatically promoted to 'TRUSTED REGISTERED USERS' (which has private messaging privledges) once they meet certain criterea, mainly ? amount of days as a member and ? amount of posts.
Your private message totals will be wrong, as it has the former total, to reset to correct numbers, do this...
Go to private messaging, send a private message to yourself. Then delete that private message from a) your inbox and b) your sent folder, this will reset the total to 0. And back to normal.
Don
