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I am The Cyberwolfe and these are my ramblings. All original content is protected under a Creative Commons license - always ask first.
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Archive for January 16th, 2010

It’s Alive!!!!!!

Posted in Geekery on January 16th, 2010

Son. Of. A. Bitch. That was a close one.

For those of you who have not seen the problems of the past few days, here’s the short summary:

Logged in to make (gasp!) a post. Got nagged to upgrade.

Started auto-upgrade plugin, everything goes fine until I hit the “upgrade database” bit. Turns out the original blog was built on an older MySQL version and can’t be updated. This essentially breaks the update and the blog is now broken.

O_o?    Sonovacrap.

Through some major back-pedaling and arcane incantations I can’t recall, I managed to get this rolled back to where they were before I started. A smarter me would have let things sit there.

Instead, I called my host, and they said they couldn’t upgrade the database, I would have to export from the old and create a new db at the correct version, which was available to me. This would have been fine, of course, if I knew the first bloody thing about manipulating a MySQL db through a phpMyAdmin interface. As it was, I found the Export button easily enough, and was able to create the new database.

The bad part came on the import – nothing I did worked at all. No clue why. The error messages would probably have been quite useful if I knew a fuckin’ thing about databases, but we both know I don’t.

In a fit of desperation, I make a clone of the existing blog in a second directory and use the WP export function to generate a save file, and then I import it into that clone. This, amazingly, seems to work…

…until I get a close look at the posts – they all date from February 2006 and back. Somehow, everything from Feb 2006 to present is gone.

I rip open all of my SQL dumps to verify, but I’m safe – I have backups. For whatever reason, the import process just bailed somehow and missed the last 3 years. I then spend a couple of hours over Friday night and Saturday morning trying to figure out enough SQL lingo to be able to import the relevant chunks of the dump files to the new database, but I am unsuccessful. Again, the error messages mean nothing to me.

Despairing greatly, and dreading trying to find someone with enough experience to assist me (the only real dbadmin I know is my boss, and there is no way I am ever showing him this blog) I decide that maybe I should try one last time from a clean database.

Click click click and a fresh db is born. I take my original SQL dump file and split it out into two files (it’s over the size limit for imports) and cut the new db user name info in. A few more clicks, and I’m ready to go. Deep breath, and click…

The spinny thing goes round and round, and then the page refreshes. What’s that on the left? No, it can’t be! It’s a list of tables it just created! And there are no error messages! Quickly, I load up the second half of the file – it loads too! I brwose through the contents quickly, and it looks to be all there! I tell Tolerant to cross her fingers as I bring up FileZilla, download, edit and re-upload the db config file in a flash. A few clicks later, and …

I see the Diary of a Wolfeman in all the original black-and-orange glory. It lives. I breathe. I throw both fists in the air and smile beatifically. The Universe still loves me.

And then, with my newfound SQL prowess and feelings of great heroism, I kill a spider for Tolerant. Life is good.