[Mediawiki-l] Help! Need to re-create from changes!

Jan Steinman Jan at Bytesmiths.com
Thu Dec 22 04:57:06 UTC 2005


Some of you may remember (way back in "Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Re:  
1.5.2 problems with MySQL 5.0.16?", six sad days ago) that my 1.5.3  
wiki went away when I installed MySQL 5.0.16.

<sob>It appears that none of the innodb tables are recoverable, even  
on my backup.</sob>

The good news is, it was a young site. I'm now preparing a more  
rigorous backup regime for my more mature MediaWikis.

(I know, I know: mechanic's torque wrench syndrome: "turn until it  
strips, then back off a quarter-turn..." :-)

Luckily, for whatever reason, the changes database was MyISAM, so  
it's still good. (There's something to be said for separate database  
file sets.) But [[Special:Recentchanges]] wouldn't show any of it.

HOWEVER, I stopped sobbing when I was showing a colleague how to get  
an RSS feed in her browser (Safari 2.0.2 rocks!) and I discovered  
that the changes were visible in the RSS feed!

So I've copied what I could from the RSS feed, but am hungry to  
restore the entire site.

So, my questions are:
1) is there a way to get more RSS out of it, like back to the Epoch?  
I searched in my prefs in the Browser, on MediaWiki, and also through  
includes/DefaultSettings.php to no avail. I recall seeing some  
"number of items" setting, but can't find it.

2) or better yet, is there some easier way to recover things from the  
changes? I looked at the database directory, and can't imagine where  
this history is coming from.

:::: Our present economic system is... little more than a well- 
organized method for converting natural resources into garbage. --  
Jay Hanson
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Van>





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