XF 2.3 Where are Custom Avatar Files? Can they be restored if accidentally deleted?

[Steve Freides]

A question I've been unable to answer. When a user deletes their custom avatar by mistake, is that file still on the server? Assuming we have it, how could I restore it for the user? I see in the ACP I can upload a file for the user but that isn't the goal here, and it looks like what I can do in the ACP is no different than what the user could do for themselves.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

-S-

 

[chillibear]

Uploaded avatars are stored in your data/avatars directory within the Xenforo install, there are subdirectories for each size of avatar generated from the original. They are further subdivided into directories based on the user's ID.

<xenforo_install_dir>/data/avatars/<size_code>/<prefix>/<user_id>.jpg

The size code will be: h, l, m, o, s with the o being the original. The prefix is the thousands part of the user ID, so a user with an ID of 5 would have a prefix of 0, one with an ID of 3456 would be 3, etc.

If a user deletes the avatar via the dialog in their profile then then the XF server will delete the files from disk.

So unless you periodically backup your filesystem in some way, such as periodic copies or the filesystem has some kind of automatic snapshotting setup and have one from before they deleted the avatar then I'm afraid the file is gone and you won't be able to recover it. If you don't have any backups you could I suppose check to see if the Internet Archive happened to duplicate a copy if they have scraped your site recently, worth it at a pinch.

 

[Steve Freides]

Uploaded avatars are stored in your data/avatars directory within the Xenforo install, there are subdirectories for each size of avatar generated from the original. They are further subdivided into directories based on the user's ID.

<xenforo_install_dir>/data/avatars/<size_code>/<prefix>/<user_id>.jpg

The size code will be: h, l, m, o, s with the o being the original. The prefix is the thousands part of the user ID, so a user with an ID of 5 would have a prefix of 0, one with an ID of 3456 would be 3, etc.

If a user deletes the avatar via the dialog in their profile then then the XF server will delete the files from disk.

So unless you periodically backup your filesystem in some way, such as periodic copies or the filesystem has some kind of automatic snapshotting setup and have one from before they deleted the avatar then I'm afraid the file is gone and you won't be able to recover it. If you don't have any backups you could I suppose check to see if the Internet Archive happened to duplicate a copy if they have scraped your site recently, worth it at a pinch.

Thank you for a complete answer. This isn't a big deal, but I thought if i could help, I would. Not a thing worth resorting to using a backup.

-S-