Restoration

[Kirauni]

Dear members and visitors of Lea Halalela,

I just wanted to let you know that I'll be working on restoring some of Lea's old topics and postings. I might have to shut down the board for about 1 or 2 hours, but hopefully I won't have to do that. I'll let you know once I'm done and don't worry in case you see a notice stating that the board is in offline mode.

If everything goes well, we can finally have many of our old postings back. Yay!

[Simbaspirit]

thanks so much!!

[nathalie]

I came to peace with them being gone.

Not sure I wanna see my old posts

[Kirauni]

You're welcome, Simbaspirit.

Finally, after about 12 hours of work I'm almost done. Phew... that was some awful work!
But first things first.

Sadiki gave me the old backups he got from Mufasa back in 2008, I think.
As many of you know, they have been corrupted badly and could not be repaired. Some of the most important tables were missing (users, threads, etc.).
However the vital post-table could be saved and it contained usernames, threadname and of course the messages.
But without a working structure and the thread-tables no converter could work it it. On top of that, back then, the backup was made with vB 2. We are running vB 4 what made the dump incompatible. So yes, it appeared that the threads and posts had been lost for good.

Then Sadiki told me about what happend and as I already got quite some experience with "restoring" lost forums (e. g. The Furry Forum, The Savannah, and several other forums) I had an idea of how to restore the postings, but I lacked the experience when it came to coding.
That's where my friend s-tlk (also a long-term member here) came in.
He had already offered his help before and he's a real genius when it comes to scripting!
So I told him about the situation and showed him our backup. He was able to retrieve some postings and included them into a plain vB3 installation. I don't know what kind of magic he did there, but after some problems it seemed to work. In case you are interested he could surely provide some details once he's back from his "journey to the wild".

So with that all done, that's where I came in. I merged that installation with this board.
Unfortunately, this was really ugly since the import script didn't work at first and I had to manually adjust some setting and tables in the database. I also had to deal with wrong post- and thread ids, crashed databases and other creepy things... But don't make me go into details there.


I'm glad I'm able to take a small break now.
And thank God it all seems to have worked out in the end.. I couldn't have done it alone!

To make a long story short: Now you can find what we could restore in the forum "great kings of the past" (not availabe for guests, sorry.)
However, since the thread table could not be saved we could not sort them in the proper subforums. That's why they are all mixed up right now. Maybe the team here will work on that someday, I don't know. We'll see about that.

So now it's there for you, in case you're interested. Of course I understand if you're done with it and just want to start over. That's also fine.

There are still some issues like merging imported users with the existing ones or fixing minor code issues, but for now things look okay. In case you notice something odd, you can write me a PM with detailed information. That would help a lot.

Oh and I also took some time an added new Timon smileys (or is it smilies?). Hope you like them!

[nathalie]

236 pages ??? lol Great job !!

Too bad it won't bring the older members back, but it'll bring back a lot of nostalgia, lol.

[Kirauni]

Lol, yeah that sounds insane, doesn't it?
And I'm glad you think it's a great job. That really means a lot to me!


I was a little bit worried about you being angry with me... Yeah sounds stupid, I know. But I since you've gotten over the lost postings, I just had the feeling you didn't want them back and that I hurt you with restoring those things anyway. You know I'm so into this forum-archaeology-stuff and I sometimes forget that not everyone is as keen on keeping "old" things alive as me. But for me these pieces of the past are valuable and worth keeping. And somehow I thought Lea and of course the members who stick to the board even now deserve it.

Sure, you can't get the old users back. But maybe they will come back someday, remembering the "good old days" and then they can revive some of the good momens again. At least I love a place I can always return to. Especially when RL is changing fast. But I'm getting a little bit philosophical again...

Bare with me

[nathalie]

Why would you think you'd hurt me with it? All I said was, I came to terms with the fact they were gone. There was nothing we could do about it, so that was just it.
And neither of us here had the experience like you guys do to actually get most of it back.

I'm not hurt at all
I probably won't be catching up much from the old posts, haha, I know what I sounded like back then

I think at Lea we were very keen on keeping old posts. Because once in a while, you do get the urge to browse through them, and go "awwww" haha.
I remember someone from the staff deleting a bunch of older threads once (without the other staff people knowing) and we were all very upset about it.

[ThiagoPE]

wow, my post count had a "boom" (it were multiplied by 6) and seems my join date is "more accurate" now (even tough i think i joined even early here)

Great job Kirauni, it was nice see the old posts and old members.

[nathalie]

I didn't even notice that, mine went up with 5.000 haha, and my join date is 100 % correct.
10 years at lea now.

[HasiraKali]

Thanks for doing this. While I don't see myself going back and reading old posts, I know a lot of other people will be doing just that.

I also wish we could get members back. I just don't know what else to do for that.

Also, love the new Timon smileys.

[Dare]

Well, this is something I never thought would happen.
Thanks Kirauni!
This should be very interesting, yes indeedy! ^__^

*ponders*

While there are a handful of threads that I'd be happy to re-read again (and perhaps find some lost information that I've been searching for since circa 2007-2008)...on the other hand, I think some things from Lea's past (omg the shenanigans) should probably stay there. Also, I think there may some formerly "staff only" threads that are now visible - dunno how the adminisphere folks feel about that or if it's an issue, but wanted to make a note of it.
*le shrug*

*wanders around*
Wow, it's hard to believe that there was a time when I had more than 1,000 posts here.
Kind of weird to have my old "Wicked" account restored though - it seems I am now inadvertently violating forum rule #7.

[cleargreenwater]

Ahaha, omg! I forgot I joined here once during one of Lilymud's bandwidth blackouts! Holy crap!

That was fun, lol.

[Guntur]

I can't believe I deleted my first account or I could join in and read some of the cool stuff that was left behind.

Anyway Good work, congratulations and excellent for restoring the old data to the new site. I'm glad we could see this again, instead going to the time machine site just to see the content.

[Kirauni]

wow, my post count had a "boom" (it were multiplied by 6) and seems my join date is "more accurate" now (even tough i think i joined even early here)

Great job Kirauni, it was nice see the old posts and old members.

Thanks, Thiago. The "join date" is basically the oldest post in the board. But I noticed that not all of Lea's posts are back. Probably because it was not included in the backup. Or maybe you joined earlier but didn't post or we could take your join date right off the backuped database... Anyhow, I'm glad it's more accurate now.

I didn't even notice that, mine went up with 5.000 haha, and my join date is 100 % correct.
10 years at lea now.

Glad to hear that, too!
I came across the ?nathalie? account... Should I merge it with your current one or is there a special reason for it to be there?

[...]
Also, love the new Timon smileys.

Thank you. I'm glad you like them

Well, this is something I never thought would happen.
Thanks Kirauni!
This should be very interesting, yes indeedy! ^__^

You're welcome, Dare!

While there are a handful of threads that I'd be happy to re-read again (and perhaps find some lost information that I've been searching for since circa 2007-2008)...on the other hand, I think some things from Lea's past (omg the shenanigans) should probably stay there.

Good luck on that. Oh and don't worry about the "shenanigans". As far as I'm informed certain topics were pruned on a regular basis. Something about 1000 posts per topic? I don't know for sure... Like the "this or that" game.

Also, I think there may some formerly "staff only" threads that are now visible - dunno how the adminisphere folks feel about that or if it's an issue, but wanted to make a note of it.
*le shrug*

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. We've already talked about that, too. The problem is that with the thread-table gone, we have no way of knowing where a thread belongs to unless we check every single one manually. But it's being worked on. The question is if we should put certain topics in their proper forums or if we just keep them in the archive. But there were some interesting TLK topics I noticed. In my opinion they are worth to be moved to the right place. Like the Translation of TLK lyrics etc.
But that also remains to be seen.

Kind of weird to have my old "Wicked" account restored though - it seems I am now inadvertently violating forum rule #7.

Good that you mention it. So you were the user called "wicked"? I could merge the two accounts if you like. So you would not be violating the rules.

I can't believe I deleted my first account or I could join in and read some of the cool stuff that was left behind.

Uhm... you lost me there. What did you mean? Can you rephrase that, please?

Anyway Good work, congratulations and excellent for restoring the old data to the new site. I'm glad we could see this again, instead going to the time machine site just to see the content.

Thank you, Guntur. By Time Machine you mean the Way Back Machine, right? Unfortunately it hasn't stored much data so it hasn't been of much help. Too bad Lea 3 (well.... the one that came after Mufasa's Lea went down) was for members only. Otherwise the Way Back Machine could have saved a few postings and we could add them to the pile. Oh well... you can't have everything, right?

[KanuTGL]

Woow, that's amazing work, Kirauni (and s-tlk)! It's quite a substantial amount of posts you've managed to recover...! Well done!

[Dare]

So you were the user called "wicked"? I could merge the two accounts if you like. So you would not be violating the rules.

Sure, might as well merge 'em, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.
*nodnods*

[Kirauni]

Thanks, KanuTGL!

Don't worry Dare. That's no trouble at all. I assume you want to keep the name "dare" and not "wicked", right?

[nathalie]

I came across the ?nathalie? account... Should I merge it with your current one or is there a special reason for it to be there?

Haha, that was my "special" user name back then, it was •nathalie•

I never registered again with those circles, was a pain to log it at times

[Guntur]

Uhm... you lost me there. What did you mean? Can you rephrase that, please?

I deleted my first account in rage back on 06, I wish I would just use that account. I believe this is my forth or fifth account or name change on this beautiful site.

Anyway if you find Phoenix, or Guntur, or Fendi, on the database that would be me and I would love to merge it if it's possible.

[Dare]

Thanks, KanuTGL!
I assume you want to keep the name "dare" and not "wicked", right?

Yes please