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08:10, 19th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Wiki crash.

Posted by Morgan Coldsoul
Morgan Coldsoul
member, 227 posts
25+ years experience
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 00:31
  • msg #1

Wiki crash

I know that jase looked into problems with wiki editing toward the end of last year, and that at least the ability to code and edit wiki articles/pages was resolved. However, I've noticed that all of my wikis took a huge hit in terms of data loss, like there was some kind of corruption that came along with...whatever it was that happened to cause the difficulties. I had one of them backed up (thankfully!) but not all of the material for every game. I've looked at the previous versions and they all seem to have been wiped, lost, or corrupted, as well. So, now I have multiple wikis that have huge holes in them, with data that's simply gone.

Is there any kind of backup for the wikis that would allow rollback to a previous edit, possibly outside the "previous versions" option for individual articles? Like, was there any independent storage or similar where a wiki could potentially be reset to a prior date? Or is the missing data just unrecoverable?
jase
admin, 3523 posts
Cogito, ergo procuro.
Carpe stultus!
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 02:11
  • msg #2

Wiki crash

Alas that's not the way the wiki works.  All the articles are a file saved on the server's hard drive.  I can't take any credit for the way it works, I pretty much nicked it from other wiki's but what happens is;

  • You edit an article and it's saved to a file on the server.  Let's say it's the home page for game 1234.  It's saved under something like data/1234/home.
  • You update the article.
    • The current file is copied to archive/1234/home.<date>.gz.
    • The new information is saved over data/1234/home.
  • There's also a bunch of metadata that gets saved along with all this (who edited, when etc) but that's mostly irrelevant.


There's no database to be corrupted, nothing that can suddenly roll back in time.  Everything's a file and there's no way a file can revert back in time.  Files can become corrupted, but that's when you see gobbledygook rather than text.  I'd check your wiki archives of around the time the issue happened and see if the data is in them, that's your rollback.
Morgan Coldsoul
member, 228 posts
25+ years experience
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 02:32
  • msg #3

Wiki crash

How exactly would I access the archives? I don't see a link, so can you tell me what format I should enter the URL or whatever to see these files? I tried a couple different ways and couldn't figure it out.
This message was last edited by admin, as it was against the forum rules, at 02:38, Sun 05 Feb 2017.
jase
admin, 3524 posts
Cogito, ergo procuro.
Carpe stultus!
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 02:44

Wiki crash

At the bottom it'll have something like;

quote:
Last edited by Morgan Coldsoul, January 26 2017 13:55:19.  Secured game article.  You can edit itVersions

"Versions" is the link you want.
Morgan Coldsoul
member, 229 posts
25+ years experience
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 02:51
  • msg #5

Wiki crash

I wasn't sure because my "versions" are all blank, as I mentioned. When I click into "versions" on any page, it has a list with dates that show who edited, when, etc., but accessing any of the stored versions shows they're almost universally blank. There are a few scattered ones here and there, mostly very old ones, that have a few words, but generally there's just...nothing. T_T
jase
admin, 3525 posts
Cogito, ergo procuro.
Carpe stultus!
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 06:21
  • msg #6

Wiki crash

Your older articles had smart-quotes and em dashes (presumably from a word processor) which were tripping up the HTML conversion.  I've tried to make it more robust handling these odd codes and have tried to cater for the above.  Anything other than what I've deliberately converted (single and double open/close quotes plus em dash) will no longer stop the page from displaying completely but the individual characters will probably come up as �.
Morgan Coldsoul
member, 230 posts
25+ years experience
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 06:35
  • msg #7

Wiki crash

I read another thread or two that discussed that, but is that why almost all of my previous versions are just blank? I'm not even seeing placeholder characters, I just open the previous versions and there's nothing at all, just like how whole paragraphs (or whole pages) are gone from the most current versions. :( I don't see anything at all that I can edit or recover for like 95% of entries.
jase
admin, 3526 posts
Cogito, ergo procuro.
Carpe stultus!
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 06:53
  • msg #8

Invalid characters in wiki documents stops the page

You'd have to ask the PHP developers why the default is to return an empty string when encountering an invalid code sequence.  It's just the way they opted to go, not my decision.

Have you checked your pages?  As I said it will "no longer stop the page from displaying".
Morgan Coldsoul
member, 231 posts
25+ years experience
Sun 5 Feb 2017
at 07:07
  • msg #9

Invalid characters in wiki documents stops the page

Ah! I just checked them and I see what you're talking about. I didn't realize you meant you had done something to it. I am indeed now seeing what you're talking about and it looks like it's all there! I've gone through about five or six pages and the previous versions now appear to be present, as before.

I think I understand what you were saying before: The special characters, and the same problem that happened with the coding before, is why the prior versions were invisible, just like they went invisible for the landing pages as well?

Either way, thanks! It looks like this fixed it. I'll be sure to back it up, this time. <.<
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