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Update on the System Recovery

Hello,

I realize that for many of you this has been a long and troublesome process, and I can thankfully say that ShoutWiki will soon be back up and fully functional.  Currently, I’m working on recovering all the databases; it’s a slow process, but so far all the databases that have been recovered (there are around 700 in all) are completely intact which means that you did not lose any pages, etc. from this crash.

After all the databases are recovered, we will need to basically reinstall the server, and once that is completed ShoutWiki will back in action.

Thank you all for your patience during this time, and I hope that you continue to choose ShoutWiki!

Regards,

Skizzerz
ShoutWiki Technical Team

UPDATE 1 (31 March 2011, 3:14am UTC): Current status is 125 done, 521 to go. Will continue to update as this progresses.

UPDATE 2 (31 March 2011, 3:52am UTC): Current status is 274 done, 372 to go.

UPDATE 3 (2 April 2011, 6:55pm UTC): There were about 10 wikis that didn’t recover properly, so I’m working on a way to recover them. Once this is done, everything else should go relatively quickly.

UPDATE 4 (4 April 2011, 11:56pm UTC): Clarification on the above: When I said they did not recover properly, this does NOT mean that they can’t be recovered. The issue lies with some stuff wrong with the backend behind the dbs, so certain large wikis with lots of revisions and log entries took too long to dump in one go before MySQL crashed. What I’ll be doing for these 6 wikis (got 4 of them to work normally since the last update) is dumping them table-by-table, so your stuff will not be lost. As for an update on how other stuff is going, we are now waiting for the Head Tech to reinstall the Operating System on the server so that we may begin restoring our backups. Due to the nature of the backup restoring process, wikis will become available as the backups get restored, so check back in a day or three to see if your wiki is up.

UPDATE 5 (9 April 2011): OS is going to be reinstalled sometime later today, and provided all goes well, so will the wiki restorations. Wikis will be restored in alphabetical order and will become available as they get restored (meaning some will be up before others). I’ll post another update when the restorations actually start.

UPDATE 6 (16 April 2011): The tech team has taken backups of databases and important configuration files. The CTO estimates that we might get started on the recovery as soon as this weekend, but it might take a major part of the next week. We’ll keep you posted on this. –Jack Phoenix

UPDATE 7 (19 April 2011): The operating system has now been reinstalled and the backup files are being copied to the server currently. Recovery will begin later today. –Jack Phoenix

UPDATE 8 (19 April 2011): Data recovery proper has begun. During this process the site may display various error messages. –Misza

UPDATE 9 (19 April 2011): The wiki restoration process has begun. Wikis should become available as they get restored. They are going in random order, so we cannot give any ETAs on specific wikis. Please note that just because your wiki is back, it does NOT mean that all the restores are done. As such, if issues arise, please alert a staff member on IRC so that we can look into it. We are also considering rolling out the 1.16 upgrade after the wikis get restored, so you may see some downtime there as well. –Skizzerz

UPDATE 10 (21 April 2011): We have restored the vast majority of the wikis, as people were quick to find out, we ran into a LOT of issues trying to restore Autopedia and Simpsons Fanon. We’re going to continue working on ways to restore these two wikis, but in the meantime, we will be pushing out the 1.16 upgrade to the rest of the wikis. After the upgrade finishes, editing will be re-enabled. –Skizzerz

UPDATE 11 (27 April 2011): We’re working on both issues, the MediaWiki upgrade and restoration of Autopedia and Simpsons Fanon databases, but it turns out that MediaWiki’s default upgrade script is not suitable for our purposes as-is, which means that we have to write our own upgrade script. This is something that we want to do right, without rushing, in order not to mess up anything, which is why it might take a bit longer then expected. Once the techs have finished writing the upgrade script, the actual upgrade process should be relatively quick, after which the database will be unlocked and you can resume editing. We’ll keep you posted on this. –Jack Phoenix

UPDATE 12 (1 May 2011): The update process has begun. In the meantime, a “ShoutWiki is currently undergoing maintenance” page will show until updates are complete. Once complete, editing will be re-enabled. ETA is about two hours from now, provided no issues are found. –Skizzerz

UPDATE 13 (1 May 2011): Updates are complete and editing has been re-enabled. If you run into issues, please let someone know on IRC and open a bug in our bugzilla: http://bugzilla.shoutwiki.com — At some point in time we’ll be re-updating to the newest 1.16 version, but this will not cause any downtime and should be for the most part invisible to you guys.

By Skizzerz

ShoutWiki staff member

387 replies on “Update on the System Recovery”

@Silver Knight

Psychiatric disorders you might have are really none of my or anybody’s business. If you’re not willing to use a solution to the current problem, then your car updates are clearly not so important as you claim.

@Escyos

“writing it out on notepad is like having your testicles bitten, painful and at all costs avoidable.” — Well, I say tough luck. Either take my advice or leave it. Or leave Shoutwiki entirely. But do NOT tell others to do so; its their choice, not yours. If you get out, you do so in a quiet manner.

And BTW, installing mediawiki on your personal computer to run a wiki isn’t as simple or straightforward as you make it sound.

@ Nick

plainly, stop being a douche. Quite a few of us moved away from wikia not only because of their BS about Oasis, but because of the rectum-licking fanboys who jumped on everyone’s case after the change had been made. We don’t need that here. Shoutwiki screwed up, they did it big time, and they’re getting raked over coals for it. They failed at updates and any sort of apologetic gesture to make up for things, and people are calling them on it. Honestly? I’m not trusting my main wiki on here either, partially because of that.

As for telling people not to move and to do things “quietly”? Eff that. Shoutwiki has problems, as do all of the free hosts, and being quiet about them just means they’re not going to be fixed. Since I’m here, I might as well rattle off a few of them now:

insufficient documentation: I have my own wiki on my own hosting, and for the life of me I still don’t know how to set the one on here to show Monaco to logged-out users.

Underused extensions: look at that paltry list. Where’s the widgets extention (not wikia’s, but the third party one), where’s the one for maps? Where’s… a chunk of the non-proprietary ones from wikia?

Sporadic updates: Even if it’s hearing about long-term goals, for gods sake update on a semi-regular basis.

So yeah, they have problems, they have promise too. Just we don’t need fanboys around here making it a mess for everyone else.

@Basil

I’m not defending Shoutwiki because I’m a “fanboy” of them. Hell, I’ve barely even edited on a Shoutwiki wiki. I’m defending them because you blame them for something out of their control. Also, I’m also a user from a wiki that moved from wikia, so I reckon I know what I’m talking about.

As for the documentations, its your right to ask staff for help. If you want to leave, leave, but as I said, you do NOT convince others. What others do is not your business. I think its sufficient to say that Shoutwiki at least deletes wikis that leave, unlike wikia. Think about it.

@nick, and I think that if people want to leave then then can leave, and say whatever the hell they want while doing it. Thing is, fanboys never admit they’re fanboys, it’s part of that whole “I’m right and so I’m going to try and quiet dissent with ‘gtfo and don’t make a fuss’.” thing.

And looky here, a LOT of us are people getting away from Wikia, I guess that means we’re all right! No, it means we should all know better about making statements like “If you want to leave, leave, but as I said, you do NOT convince others”.

Basil, yes, if you want to leave, it’s your right to do so. Others may not want to. As far as I recall, my wiki community initiated a wikia move on it’s own, without saying anything to other wikis. We were unhappy with wikia’s services and wanted to move, nobody told us to do so.
As for your fanboy accusations, I find them unhelpful and will ignore them.

Woohoo! We’re back online. I get nervous when it goes down, after last time. Hence my earlier comment.

Good grief, why don’t they keep us up to date? I’m perfectly willing to be patient when things go wrong, but they need to tell us what’s going on.

Again, is it too much to ask wanting to know why the site’s been down? You have until July 1, or I am gone.

Guys, at this point I’d honestly recommend referata, no it doesn’t have Monaco, but there’s a requested features page, and the admin there is quite good about listening to user feedback and adding new things with good reasons. Even if he doesn’t go for Monaco, the place has a good set of features, and at the very least, has vector.

I am not as mad about the outage, but the lack of information regarding it. What’s broken? Why is it broken? How long will it take to fix it? I hope the site’s up soon, but you guys need a different hosting provider. If the issue is the problem with ”’their”’ server, or at least a backup server, so no time online is lost. And what happened to those auto-generated database dumps you guys promised?

Is anyone reading this? On Friday, (if the outage is still going on) it will have been down A WHOLE WEEK. When is it coming back, and when are you guys FINALLY going to dump your INADEQUATE host?

I guess I overeacted a bit. The main thing is I’m a little concerned after the last outage. Hope you guys understand. Good luck to you guys, and I hope this issue is resolved soon, and with no more issues.~~~~

For the respect of the users that hadn’t left ShoutWiki for the last outage and loss of information on march-april-may, ShoutWiki should have made the necessary actions to prevent another major outage like the one we are experiencing right now.

I know that unpredicted outages sometimes are unavoidable, but you guys should have done your work to make the site up and running again with the less time possible. 1-2 days is acceptable for a major disaster on the servers. More than 1 week is not acceptable, remembering the last one.

I could understand that the problem may be your hosting company, but the lack of alternative ways to give the site up and updates about how things are going on makes this site totally unprofessional and abandoned to their luck.

If you guys, ShoutWiki staff, aren’t responsible enought to maintain a wiki service like this, you’ll better publish a XML dump of all the wikis and close this site down. Many people came here because of Wikia, and it was looking great, but you fucked it up.

If I had a wiki here, I’d be moving it to some other host the first day ShoutWiki comes up again. No one could assure this won’t happen again.

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