Server error, please try again later

[Divinum Fiat]

Hi all,

For some unexplainable reason I got logged out of my forum and when I try logging back in I get the message "server error, please try again later."

The page is frozen at that error page and no matter what tabs I click, I can't move away from the error page.

Does anyone have an idea of what this could be related to (my other domains, that share the same server, are up and running fine)?

 

[MattW]

That table is also missing gender and style_id. There should be 29 entries, and there are only 25 in your table.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

whatever backup Hostgator has (I believe they do server backups every Monday).

 

[MattW]

You may need to restore from a backup, as there could be other tables which are missing entries.

Also, the server they are hosting you on is running VERY older versions of PHP and MySQL

PHP version 5.2.17
MySQL version 5.1.65-cll

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thank you, Matt! I will call Hostgator again to see if they can do a backup restore (and submit a ticket to XF). Not sure what I can do about the older versions of php and mysql though.

Thank you!!

 

[MattW]

No problem. Hopefully they can restore the database for you. I'd be interested to know why those fields have been dropped from that table though.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

yes, me too. This has happened before and the tables had to be manually restored by XF. Will keep you posted.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

You may need to restore from a backup, as there could be other tables which are missing entries.

Also, the server they are hosting you on is running VERY older versions of PHP and MySQL

PHP version 5.2.17
MySQL version 5.1.65-cll

Matt, do you know which version php and mysql I'm supposed to run?

 

[MattW]

I'd recommend at least PHP 5.3 and MySQL 5.5

 

[Divinum Fiat]

thank you, Matt, they are working on it right now.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Update: Hostgator updated php to 5.3 and mysql to 5.5 and they did a backup restore. Unfortunately the back up was from Dec. 3rd, but I'm okay with that. Forum is back up and running!

Thank you for all your help!!! Really, really appreciate it!

 

[MattW]

Glad you are finally back up and running. Any idea yet what caused the issue with that database table?

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Not yet, have a request in to XF tech support. Hostgator didn't know. This happened before in Spring and we had to do a full restore. Ah, the joys of technology.

 

[Ingenious]

This reinforces the need to do a daily backup. Can your host upgrade you from a weekly to a daily backup? Daily seems to be standard practice these days. If they can't, I'd suggest running something called a cron job and to back up your database each night using a mysql dump command. As MattW above is already accessing your site to help out maybe he can sort this for you (as I know you're not tech-savvy). There are posts here in this forum for script suggestions which backup daily with a unique name so if this happens again you can go through the backups to the next available good one.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Ingenious, yes, I did ask Hostgator to set the server to do daily backups. I still want to know from XF, however, why this happened again. Would be nice to know.

 

[MattW]

This reinforces the need to do a daily backup. Can your host upgrade you from a weekly to a daily backup? Daily seems to be standard practice these days. If they can't, I'd suggest running something called a cron job and to back up your database each night using a mysql dump command. As MattW above is already accessing your site to help out maybe he can sort this for you (as I know you're not tech-savvy). There are posts here in this forum for script suggestions which backup daily with a unique name so if this happens again you can go through the backups to the next available good one.

I can certainly help in setting up a script to drop out the database on a daily basis, and keep 5 rolling days worth.

 

[Divinum Fiat]

I think it's set up now to do that automatically. I didn't know Hostgator had that service, they were the ones who suggested it. Let's see how this works. Thank you so much, Matt, you're great!

 

[Digital Doctor]

Glad you are finally back up and running. Any idea yet what caused the issue with that database table?

With database tables missing .... isn't there a log somewhere that would show when and the user that did the deleting ?
Blueprint4love: you should get Hostgator to determine when and who deleted the tables.
Would the most likely cause be malicious hacking ?

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Are these tables from Hostgator, i.e. the server? I thought these were tables missing from the XF software. I did hear back from XF tech support and they said they would have to be manually deleted unless there is an add-on that could do such a thing, but that it would be rare. I'm the only admin and only I have access to the admin panel and the cpanel. And I am way to non-technical to delete anything. Hhhm.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Are these tables from Hostgator, i.e. the server? I thought these were tables missing from the XF software.

What was deleted was the MySQL database tables that Hostgator hosts for you.
Xenforo accesses those tables (reads, writes) but the tables aren't really a part of Xenforo software.

And I am way to non-technical to delete anything.

That's why I think someone hacked your server and deleted them.

Now is the time to fess up that you were playing around with cpanel
or playing around with something !

(We've all screwed things up before).

 

[MattW]

With database tables missing .... isn't there a log somewhere that would show when and the user that did the deleting ?

You'd only get that if you were logging all the sql commands : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/query-log.html

I doubt many people have that running on their servers though.