I thought I'd take a moment to provide a status regarding Babble-on, the SanityCheck.net forums.
Most of the people who read this blog probably already know, at least generally, what I'm typin' 'bout. For those who don't, however, right around the middle of April this year the company that hosts my primary web domain - SanityCheck.net - encountered some difficulties that took us offline for a few days. The company handled things beautifully, it was just one of those things. Upon bringing us back online we started to have some problems with the forum code. Babble-on (this iteration) was based upon rather heavily modified phpBB code with a MySQL back-end. Unfortunately the site was based upon version 2.0.8 of the phpBB code and phpBB had already worked its way up to version 2.0.20 (now 2.0.21) with most of the updates being security related. Babble-on is (was) a very active forum that has been around for 8 or 9 years. I knew the code was aging, but I hadn't had the time to update the code - the extensive modifications make the upgrades more than a little difficult.
As our host was bringing us back online we began noticing some problems that indicated we were probably being hacked. In an effort to protect the past couple of years worth of posts we took the site offline. I backed up the database and began working on updating the code. I configured Apache, Perl, PHP, SSI and MySQL on my PowerBook and hunkered down to work. I had (have) all of the posts so the situation was, more or less, only a nuisance. Interestingly, methinks, the forums were successfully hacked while they were offline! But by then I'd already created all of the required backups.
I had the site updated to version 2.0.20 and I was working through some tests to make sure things were working when my PowerBook's hard drive crashed - ironically as I was connecting to my external backup drive. I hammer my PowerBook. I'd had her for about 20 months at that time and I usually run her 24/7. If I'm not actually working on her, she's running a backup routine, or copying files on our home network, or something... she earns her keep to say the least. I recently checked her uptime before a reboot to find that she'd been running for 29 days since the last reboot... yeah, she really earns her keep. I sent her off for repair, new hard drive, whatever upgrades were available and moped around for about a week while feeling like Timmy without Lassie. I had everything backed up on my external drive except for the upgraded Babble-on forums that I had completed just prior to the crash.
But here is where the BLUE-luck really kicks in. Upon receiving my newly repaired and upgraded PowerBook I set about recovering her from my backup drive. I connected the drive, and prepared to recover everything... and my back-up drive died. Go fuckin' figure. I wear a belt and suspenders and I look both ways before crossing a one-way street, only to be hit from above by a falling piano while a denim-eating-bacteria eats away my Levis.
So I spent the next week-plus rebuilding my PowerBook from scratch. I lost more than two years of email, contacts, pretty much everything. Most upsettingly I lost a bunch of fictional prose I had been working on. I write music and lyrics on a daily basis and I've done so for most of my time as an adult. But fictional prose is a new discipline, one that I was just developing. That loss kicked me in the proverbial balls. Whine whine sob sob. By the way, that wasn't just a turn of phrase, my testes are actually prone to sharing proverbs.
So after rebuilding my PowerBook, I once again started rebuilding and upgrading Babble-on. I've worked on the code during every bit of free time, most evenings and weekends. By this past weekend I had fully recreated my development environment and I was completely focused on the project. I spent, literally, over 20 hours on the rebuild this past weekend. I actually walked from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, sat in front of my PowerBook and hacked for more than 10 straight hours on both Saturday and Sunday. By Monday morning I had fully recreated Babble-on, without any lost posts, on my PowerBook. Yay!
But it doesn't work on the production server. Boo!
Sigh.
I've tried everything I can think of, and I only have one remaining idea to try (as of this typing). If that doesn't work, I'll be forced to start fresh with the forums. I will still have the archives, but the old posts won't be online. Big fuckin' sigh. Either way, the forums will be returning soon. I cannot convey how much I miss them. We've had Babble-on for going on a decade and it is the very center of my social world. Without it I have a much reduced connection with most of my friends. This is the longest (by far) that Babble-on has been offline during that time. It sucks, and I cannot wait to have it back. Hopefully with the past couple of years worth of posts.
To all of the regular (and casual) posters in Babble-on, it won't be much longer before the forums return, though we may be starting over. I miss you all, and look forward to a return to abnormalcy.
