Site Status

[jason]

Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?

This pending restoration has completed

Nothing is for good. Some were "lost" but were archived and are pending restoration. This restoration will not be complete. After it is confirmed to have been done, however, we will work on checking entries and replacing the images if we can. This work isn't limited to just Mod DBs, anyone can do it BUT don't bother to do any until AFTER the archive restoration is done, to save wasting effort. I estimate that there will be at least 5k entries with a broken image for front box art after the restoration.

[jason]

Do we know what caused all this in the first place? Was it a cybersecurity incident? Was it just a random software or hardware fault on the hosting server(s)? Was it a corrupted or compromised DB? Was it a whoopsie made by one of the admins? I guess I mostly want to know if any user account info was compromised. I particularly am concerns about my password since I use it elsewhere too.

The server filled up and caused an outage. Then we had some subsequent data loss but have mostly gotten back to normal. This was not an attack or anything and I take responsibility for allowing the failings to occur.

[bikingjahuty]

Do we know what caused all this in the first place? Was it a cybersecurity incident? Was it just a random software or hardware fault on the hosting server(s)? Was it a corrupted or compromised DB? Was it a whoopsie made by one of the admins? I guess I mostly want to know if any user account info was compromised. I particularly am concerns about my password since I use it elsewhere too.

The server filled up and caused an outage. Then we had some subsequent data loss but have mostly gotten back to normal. This was not an attack or anything and I take responsibility for allowing the failings to occur.

Thank you for the clarification.

[rockybalboa]

Are we to understand some images may be lost for good?

This pending restoration has completed

Nothing is for good. Some were "lost" but were archived and are pending restoration. This restoration will not be complete. After it is confirmed to have been done, however, we will work on checking entries and replacing the images if we can. This work isn't limited to just Mod DBs, anyone can do it BUT don't bother to do any until AFTER the archive restoration is done, to save wasting effort. I estimate that there will be at least 5k entries with a broken image for front box art after the restoration.

Has the restoration been completed?

[tripredacus]

That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.

[rockybalboa]

That one attempt was done. We want to do a separate attempt at restoring images but it hasn't been started yet.

thanks

[tripredacus]

Users can now feel free to update front art on any entries that show the gray "No Art" image when viewing from the browse, search, collection or list views.

Some entries do not show a No Art image on those views but DO show the No Art image when viewing the entry directly. Do not update front arts on entries that are like this, they will be automatically updated soon.

[masamune]

When will the purchased date and cost be displayed again as you scroll down on your collection list?

[tripredacus]

I have put this on our internal task list. I can't give you a time it will be done as I am not the one that will be doing that work.

[bobi]

First, thanks for the time and efforts spent in restoring the database so quick and thoroughly, that’s a huge relief!

Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.

That raises the question, considering the obvious collaborative aspect of the database, is there any plan to ease the possibility to any one of us to backup at least the whole content of our collection (not just a selection of fields in a CSV), perhaps of the whole database? (assuming that’s not the case today, as such backups would have obviously helped in restoring everything I guess).

Sorry if that sounded harsh in any way, but the recent events obviously have me concerned about the perennity of what I list and contribute to here.

All the best and thanks again for all the work.

[sworddude]

Users can now feel free to update front art on any entries that show the gray "No Art" image when viewing from the browse, search, collection or list views.

Some entries do not show a No Art image on those views but DO show the No Art image when viewing the entry directly. Do not update front arts on entries that are like this, they will be automatically updated soon.

This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?

First, thanks for the time and efforts spent in restoring the database so quick and thoroughly, that’s a huge relief!

Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.

That raises the question, considering the obvious collaborative aspect of the database, is there any plan to ease the possibility to any one of us to backup at least the whole content of our collection (not just a selection of fields in a CSV), perhaps of the whole database? (assuming that’s not the case today, as such backups would have obviously helped in restoring everything I guess).

Sorry if that sounded harsh in any way, but the recent events obviously have me concerned about the perennity of what I list and contribute to here.

All the best and thanks again for all the work.

It is what it is. fortunately most images are still intact but ye it does seem to effect certain area's more than others.

[tripredacus]

This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?

No. This is only temporary. The final restoration has been staged and this part that I posted will not be relevant once those images were stored.

Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.

It was pretty close to that actually. In the first restoration attempt, we only looked at site traffic to determine what was missing. That is where the numbers I posted came from. But earlier this week we were able to directly compare the database vs what we had, and so round 2 of an attempt was done. So between the two restoration attempts, the total amount missing was indeed around 50k, with 12k able to be restored. As I said, the bulk of that is currently staged and hasn't been moved yet. So that leaves around 32k front box art images that were not archived.

It will be annoying for quite awhile to deal with it. I'm personally going to first focus on manually fixing my own collection, and then I will go into the game sections I primarily had worked on in the past, such as the Sega categories and PS2 hardware, since I kept all of the images I have ever uploaded to the site. Unforuntately I didn't really organize those images in any manner that makes it easy for me to find what goes where, but at least they are already present and cropped and all that.

[tripredacus]

I also want to note that some images that were uploaded in the past couple days may have been removed during the restoration progress. The remaining steps in the restoration process will not involve removing images, however the restoration may end up replacing a new image with an old image on the 9k that are in the final batch.

[jason]

The final batch of 9k have been moved over and are now in place

[sworddude]

This is a nice detail for everyone to know. is this message somewhere on the board for all to see aside from just this small message here?

No. This is only temporary. The final restoration has been staged and this part that I posted will not be relevant once those images were stored.

Nevertheless, 5k entries with missing front images seems quite a low estimate now; out of my 2344 items front images have no_art.jpg for 433 of them. Assuming this is a representative sample (might not be), that amounts to roughly 51k for the whole database.

It was pretty close to that actually. In the first restoration attempt, we only looked at site traffic to determine what was missing. That is where the numbers I posted came from. But earlier this week we were able to directly compare the database vs what we had, and so round 2 of an attempt was done. So between the two restoration attempts, the total amount missing was indeed around 50k, with 12k able to be restored. As I said, the bulk of that is currently staged and hasn't been moved yet. So that leaves around 32k front box art images that were not archived.

It will be annoying for quite awhile to deal with it. I'm personally going to first focus on manually fixing my own collection, and then I will go into the game sections I primarily had worked on in the past, such as the Sega categories and PS2 hardware, since I kept all of the images I have ever uploaded to the site. Unforuntately I didn't really organize those images in any manner that makes it easy for me to find what goes where, but at least they are already present and cropped and all that.

32K front images not archived. oof. Makes sense why so many where missing but a tough pill to swallow