lost threads & posts

[Guest]

looks like a years worth of posts have gone, vanished into where ??????
would be nice to here what's happened & if they will be restored or is that it, gone never to be seen again ?
a hell of a lot of good information lost would be a real bummer.

[Dragstews]

What timing for this to happen ...

Just this morning I picked up a new computer ... Thought it was on my end of things being I'm getting use to the new ..

Hoping all will return to what was ...

[LisaBallard]

The server experienced issues last night. The owners have techs working on it now. Will keep you posted. Lisa

[Guest]

thats great Lisa, fingers n toes crossed,.. Thanks for all....

[47str8leg]

Wouldn’t want to lose any posts that showed my sage advice , incredible insight and wit.

Especially prominently displayed during BBQ’s gas cap fiasco.

[Dragstews]

... ...

[farmall]

While they're at it, it would be wise for the owners to keep their own backups and let you periodically download a copy so a third exists (following the Rule Of Threes avoids much suffering).

The Wayback Machine doesn't save everything and tens of thousands of hours of knowledge live here.

I'd pay for a good complete forum backup and those could be a source of revenue for Chop Cult. The (ancient and no longer extant because it was eventually obsolete) World of Windows Networking sold CDs (this was before large hard drives) of their site which was all tutorials.

Since the content already exists and someone could get it free running a web scraper selling copies would be nearly free money for the owners and preserve chobber history.

[Hoghead]

The server experienced issues last night. The owners have techs working on it now. Will keep you posted. Lisa

Go Lisa! Best of luck. HH

[Dougtheinternetannoyance123]

Lisa et al, I got a PM from another member here,,,
"have you noticed your thread has been heavily edited ?

http://www.chopcult.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54762 "

And he was concerned my story about the Crocker bikes and the drama with current owners was being censored,,,It now appears its *GONE*!!!!!! I can restore most of it in a new thread, But a LOT of people were scoping it out and bringing in a lot of outside traffic for the site. (Vintage folks are pretty persnickety about accuracy and the heritage/legacy of some of these famous old bikes).

I am sorry to hear of the website issues (Blame Russia/Putin, CLEARLY this is because Sleepy Joe gave him shit @ the summit about those Hackers!................Or! Maybe its the Chinese!). I do appreciate the work and effort that goes into the site and keeping it running so us misfits, malcontents, and even Tramp Stamp have a forum!

(Anyone have a link to that BBQ Biker gas cap thread? I dont keep up, but he can be amusing!)

#edit......... the link he sent wasnt working, Now it does, but only 2020 posts on the topic. None more recent. Its not looking like it was censored, just the 2021 posts are gone. Maybe the shitbird ruining the Crocker brand hacked the site!.

[farmall]

Learn and understand how their backup process actually works and how often they take backup snapshots. Not all tech support is good but you're stuck with whatever the owners chose.

Backups are not a matter of luck but methodical planning, and proper backup includes periodic (offline) site restoration and testing because a backup untested is a backup unknown.

If the owners give you the password you can keep a personal backup using the appropriate software. Very basic backup example using Windows (barf) and cpanel:

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-backup-your-website

If you're gonna work with computers it's worth learning at least the basics then practicing offline,

[Dougtheinternetannoyance123]

Good advice as per usual farmall,,, Jesus Saves! *

Im old, tech impaired so struggle with some of the modern stuff, but I TRY! (Harder having my head bashed in, I work daily on tools and tricks to cope. Often it takes me 10x as long, and I forget stuff easily)

But I try to save stuff that is important, I have several filing cabinets and hard drive. Copy & paste, edit and save to tech files, (Keeping it all organized, is a different topic!) But I still prefer hard copies on paper for stuff as well, Especially parts books, tech and manuals, We have discussed this before with old school manual vs laptop in the shop, But we are one EMP burst or solar flare away from losing all digital data! During the wildfires last year, or the Ice storms with massive power outages, many vendors and stores were FUBAR because their Point of Sale and debit/credit card systems wont work.

In God we trust, All others pay cash.

But I troll forums often and cut and paste, tech I like, or want to keep on hand. Put it in a word document, and then print them off as well as save to several forms of digital.

For example, LowBrow customs (Site sponsor and all around good guys) had/has some great tech posts and info. I found a amazing illustrated and well articulated tech and ID post on early Triumph cylinder heads. (Amazing the small details most people are unaware of). This has been an invaluable tool. Both for sorting my own inventory and projects, but I have shared it with many others, and a real asset in going to swap meets and id'ing a old cyl head.

For whatever reason, its no longer up on their site, or wasnt last I looked, So glad I saved it! Same with the TIOC and random stuff John Healey posts, That guy has forgotten more British bike tech than most mortals will ever know. John is old! His knowledge will disappear sooner or later.

* Jesus saves!

So, after thousands of years of fighting, debate and endless acrimony, Satan and Jesus were no longer any closer to settling their differences. So God decided to settle the issues in one final contest. A bit surprising the choice of battle, but it is what it is.

Each was given a Essay assignment and X amount of hours to do it. Each was provided a work station with a PC. God, and other entities would judge the final product and may the best one win!

They rush to their work stations, fire up their PCs and furiously type away, clicking, cutting, pasting and formatting. Hours and hours slip by. Suddenly there is a huge rumble, the air becomes electric and a huge lightning bolt streaks across the sky. Power ZAP! Goes out.

Satan rants, screams hideous curses. Pounds the desk. As power is restored,, He is staring at the BSOD and takes some time to reboot, only to find all his work is gone. Nada, zilch, zip, Satan is very pissed off and fuming.

Jesus, is strangely calm and serene. Satan stares as he calmly reboots, and a few clicks later, ALL Jesus's work is restored. Nearing the end of the contest, He presses print and calmly hands in his work.

Satan is beyond livid and furious. He protests, He knashes his teeth, screeches and dances in a feverish jig. "But, but, but..............Its NOT Fair!"

God smiles and says simply........"Jesus Saves!"

[LisaBallard]

The site wasn't hacked, it was a physical hard drive failure during a scheduled backup. They are doing their best to get everything back up, but it's not a quick or easy fix. No blame or accusations are needed, it's simply a server issue.

For the record, the owner does not moderate or edit posts. I remain the only moderator and the only threads that I delete are spam threads.

Contact me with any issues or concerns.

Lisa
[email protected]

[Smiley]

I thought that nowadays most servers ran mirrored drives as standard practice to prevent this very situation? I know how you feel today after having our old CBH forum go through years of hacks and server problems but that was back in the old days.

[DoomBuggy]

Mirror or raided drives are not a panacea. My audio/video editing machine has a massive RAID 5 setup with 10 drives. Should one fail it is simply swap in a new one and it rebuilds in an hour or so. HOWEVER, two years ago I suffered two drives failing at the same time, there is no recovery from that other than backups. I was lax in my backup routine and thought that burning files to a DVD was a log term solution. Unfortunately writable DVDs only have about a five year lifespan before they start to degrade. I ended up losing a significant amount of my work. Fortunately none of the audio stuff was important and I had negatives or original tapes for most of the video/photography.

Lesson learned.

Lisa you are awesome and I thank you for every thing you do. Let us know if we can help.

[farmall]

A proper backup system should be able to restore from offsite backup even if the co-lo burns down.

BTW for individuals, printing a page to .pdf to save it is inferior to saving it as a web page in a named folder which preserves links etc.

Threads created or modified between backups will lose content hence the reason for frequent automatic backups permitting quick reversion to a previous state.

I don't rush to blame IT folks though because most small outfits are famously under-resourced.

Backups should at least follow this strategy:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

Backblaze are famed for their hdd reliability monitoring since their fleet is enormous and the usual go-to for people looking for drive upgrade info. Home users should have an idea how this stuff works and copy the (competent, enterprise) professionals. It would be tragic to lose decades of goat porn...