Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
|
|
Attachments unreliable -- please use FTP instead
As long-time members well know, the forum software we use has always been a bit peculiar in serving up attachments. Whether or not an attachment is
downloaded properly, and with the right file name, seems dependent on the agent used to download it and the phase of the moon. Only the command line
program "curl" has consistently downloaded every attachment correctly for me. Mainstream web browsers have more or less problems, with IE suffering
particularly but Firefox and Opera also unable to download every attachment correctly.
I think there is an even more serious problem now. I downloaded a forum backup last night and was surprised to see that it was 500 MB smaller than the
last backup. The shrinkage is entirely in the attachments table. Somehow the forum software seems to be losing attachments. I have not found the XMB
developers terribly helpful in diagnosing or fixing bugs, and XMB attachments have been flaky since the beginning, so I do not think we should count
on a developer fix.
Instead I suggest uploading files to the Sciencemadness FTP 'scipics' directory, as described here. You can even create your own personal subdirectories to organize files. Please don't upload files larger than 20 MB there, but we have
gigabytes of disk space free so don't worry about storage. I suggest also using the SM FTP instead of file hosting sites like ifile.it, rapidshare,
etc. for files <= 20 MB in size. That way there is no waiting to download and files don't vanish after a couple months of inactivity.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
|
|
|
Rosco Bodine
Banned
Posts: 6370
Registered: 29-9-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: analytical
|
|
Hmmm....there may be a way to overwrite the older backup in an "append files" mode as opposed to a "replace files" mode.
Noticed also that you have some hosting problems which could be involved, maybe your host has a server which is deciding for you what data you really
want to keep is only what they like to remain stored. There have been some access and connectivity issues as
well as bandwidth limitations, even a few minutes ago
the http connectivity dropped out completely for a half hour or so, but https would still get through.
|
|
|
Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
|
|
I don't think the host is deliberately limiting stored data. I am nowhere near my disk space limits. It is possible that the problems I see are a
combination of the forum software and the versions of PHP and MySQL it runs atop.
When I download a backup, it is a complete compressed database dump from the forum. It's technically possible to merge the attachments from multiple
backup copies, but it wouldn't be straightforward.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
|
|
|
Rosco Bodine
Banned
Posts: 6370
Registered: 29-9-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: analytical
|
|
Maybe put the uncompressed larger backup in a folder
and the uncompressed smaller backup in another folder,
then do an edit>select all>copy to folder of all the files
from the smaller backup folder to the larger backup folder as destination......a warning dialogue should appear saying the file named whatever already
exists
in the destination folder, overwrite? (Yes to all) and let it rip  Then if
you are lucky  you may end up with
a happy marriage of appended old files .....but I won't guarantee it
|
|
|
Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
|
|
Actually the MySQL database dump is one giant file. The attachments are entries in a table inside this dump. What you suggest would work fine, except
I have to write a script to translate the table entries into files and then back into table entries.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
|
|
|
![[*]](images/xpblue/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
