[Mediawiki-l] problems with recovery (Debian)

[Dan Saperstein]

Hi all - been stumped by something since my server's hard drive died  
over the weekend, was hoping someone here could offer some sage advice  
on my predicament.

I apologize in advance for the length of this email - I'm trying to  
provide as many details as I can with the hopes that someone would be  
able to point me in the right direction, so if you're not a techie or  
SQL junkie, don't bother reading any further  ;)

Basically, here is my story - was running a remotely-hosted Debian  
(Etch) dedicated server with latest PHP5/Apache2/MySQL5 installation,  
as well as MediaWiki 1.11.0 (i'm 99% sure this was the on the server,  
but it could have been 1.10.x).  The wiki page uses the SQL database  
named "wikidb".  Daily, at 4am, we've had a cron job that took all the  
files in an SQL folder (for example, /var/lib/mysql/wikidb ), which  
were .MYI, .MYD, and .frm files of the various tables and bzipped  
them, and my computer at home connected every morning at 5am via FTP  
to download them.  I've kept a week's worth in constant rotation for  
over a year.  So, I figured if we ever had a bad crash, we'd be  
covered.  Not the .SQL files that would have been nicer to have, but  
at least something.

Having not really paid much attention to this daily archive, I didn't  
notice that it was only about 600 KB in size, despite several hundred  
pages.  I figured it compressed well.  Maybe not...

Sunday, our hard drive basically seized, and has been declared dead by  
our hosting company.  New HD installed, fresh Debian (Etch), latest  
PHP5/Apache2/MySQL5 once again.  Un-zipped and copied the backup SQL  
files to their proper location, and phpmyadmin showed the tables as  
being in place.  Looked good.

So I tried a fresh install of MediaWiki 1.11.1, using the same info I  
had before (thought this would kick-start it into using the  
database).  Finished installation, which didn't do it - basically  
every single page failed with Syntax Errors, couldn't open or find  
every database.  OK, so maybe something was wrong with the tables.   
Went into phpmyadmin, noticed that basically the only tables with  
information in them were interwiki (168 records) and searchindex (970  
records).  Everything else had 0, 1 or 2 records.

I deleted everything, did a fresh install of MediaWiki again with no  
database in place first.  That worked, installed a brand new wiki, no  
problems.  I deleted that new "wikidb" and replaced it with a fresh  
copy of my unzipped backup files.  Same problems on the page, and now  
when i go to phpmyadmin, it says everything is "in use".  I cannot  
check/optimize/repair any of them.  Renamed the database, now I have  
access to most of them, and they mostly come back "ok" on a check -  
when I run repair, they ALL say "The storage engine for the table  
doesn't support repair".

Furthermore, when I try to run maintenance scripts such as  
update.php , I keep running into problems of the table named  
wikidb.page_restrictions missing.   Looking at my backed-up copy (plus  
another completely separate backup from October on another computer),  
we do not have the table in our wiki.db, and probably never have.   
Only the NEW installation of wikidb produced that table.  Should we  
have one?  Is this a problem??

I would gladly send anyone a copy of the files to see if they can make  
anything of them.

My concerns at this point are numerous:
	Is it possible to recover a database in this method?
	Even if I recover, do I actually have data in there?  The file sizes  
and table structure seem to indicate that my data is bunk, but maybe  
since it's all text, itmakes sense that it's so small.
	What is this wikidb.page_restrictions and should I care if I don't  
have it?
	How could I ensure that I am better backed-up in the future?  Are  
there ways I can improve what is backed up, and methods to recover it?

Thanks for making it this far!  If any of you have the time to write  
back with any suggestions, I'd be forever grateful.

Dan
--
Dan Saperstein
dan.saperstein at gmail.com

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that  
we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only  
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American  
public."
- President Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918