[UO Herald] UO Herald Data Loss

[UO News]

On June 5th, the Ultima Online website has encountered a critical failure and lost it's database. We were able to restore its content up to February 2011 and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first.

Thank you for bearing with us.

Continue reading...

 

[Sauteed Onion]

On June 5th, the Ultima Online website has encountered a critical failure and lost it's database. We were able to restore its content up to February 2011 and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first.

Thank you for bearing with us.

Continue reading...

Cool.

 

[Barok]

Last good backup was Feb 2011? Nice to know EA has good backup policies.

 

[G.v.P]

Wow, everything since Feb was lost? Ick, means they have to restructure the New UO Player's Guide. Guess that explains the old UO Herald posts here.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

Last good backup was Feb 2011? Nice to know EA has good backup policies.

This kinda data sloppiness reinforces the notion that several publishes (specifically the EC versions) were based on outdated client versions (hence fixed bugs suddenly returning).

Mythic is damned lucky that they have multiple fan sites who faithfully archive the Herald.

 

[Nimuaq]

Playguides are stored here:
http://web.cdn.eamythic.com/sites/uoherald.com/uoimages/Player_Guide_Part1.pdf
http://web.cdn.eamythic.com/sites/uoherald.com/uoimages/PlayerGuide_Part2.pdf
http://web.cdn.eamythic.com/sites/uoherald.com/uoimages/PlayerGuide_Part3.pdf

Even if they were lost, most of us already downloaded a copy .

All of the news articles can be found at:

UO Herald News | Stratics Forums
UOGuide:UO News Archives - UOGuide, the Ultima Online encyclopedia
UO News - Ultima Online Forums

All publish notes and updates can be found at:
Publishes - UOGuide, the Ultima Online encyclopedia

All BNN articles posted in 2012 can be found at:
List of BNN Articles (2012) - UOGuide, the Ultima Online encyclopedia

 

[Aurelius]

As of now, the Herald claims

"We were able to restore its content up to March 28th and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first."

So progress of a sort - but commenting as a former IT manager, having such a demonstrably feeble backup regime is amateur beyond belief....

 

[Sevin0oo0]

as a former IT manager, having such a demonstrably feeble backup regime is amateur beyond belief....

reminds me of the old days... A Backup? Sure, it's on that floppy, there on the side of the file cabinet, that big magnet is holding it safely in place.

 

[Nimuaq]

The fan sites already have all the articles posted on uoherald which appears to be the worst excuse for a game website. I really hoped for the website to be completely lost without any backup, not even a single file, so much that they'd have to design a new website from scratch with the twenty first century website design concepts. We would even be saved from the outdated info on the Live Events page. A great opportunity for a complete website re-design is unfortunately lost .

 

[G.v.P]

Even if they were lost, most of us already downloaded a copy .

I assume they have all of the files backed up on their local, they just had a problem with the UO Herald itself. Lost might be a misleading word; I would assume anything lost wasn't made entirely void due to their local backup, it's just a hassle to have to restructure everything over the last couple of months. I'd imagine Dreamweaver or whatever they use to sort stuff out would make the process a bit easier, but they likely have to edit the Herald posts by hand from the backup.

The fan sites already have all the articles posted on uoherald which appears to be the worst excuse for a game website. I really hoped for the website to be completely lost without any backup, not even a single file, so much that they'd have to design a new website from scratch with the twenty first century website design concepts. We would even be saved from the outdated info on the Live Events page. A great opportunity for a complete website re-design is unfortunately lost .

Chaos doesn't always breed progress. If you look at some of EA's new websites you'll find they're even worse than UO's. Take "Wrath of Heroes," for example. You'd expect to click on the heroes to get to a page with more information. Nope! I don't think destruction would help.

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

I'd imagine Dreamweaver or whatever they use to sort stuff out would make the process a bit easier, but they likely have to edit the Herald posts by hand from the backup.

They use Drupal to post to the Herald. Its a content management system similar to Coranto, WordPress, etc. Its insanely easy to post, as you use a WYSIWYG method similar to a stripped down HTML editor. The Herald itself is just a mash of CSS and PHP, a theme.

Its the tired-looking theme that we all detest...along with the annoying lack of content.

 

[Nimuaq]

Chaos doesn't always breed progress. If you look at some of EA's new websites you'll find they're even worse than UO's. Take "Wrath of Heroes," for example. You'd expect to click on the heroes to get to a page with more information. Nope! I don't think destruction would help.

I believe in Ultima Online exceptionalism, that it is different than the rest of the mmos with its own feel and its superior community. Thus, according to the fictional standards I have set in my mind, if there will be an official website for Ultima Online, outdated pages and broken links are simply unacceptable. I don't believe that I should fear to ask for a better website just because it might end up worse than before. I agree that one should avoid attempting to improve what is already sufficient but the current website unfortunately is not in my own opinion. I have seen better websites which people design for their pets, I also do believe that the official website in its current form does more harm than good, so I don't think we will lose anything with its destruction and I'm hopeful that the new one will reflect better what a great experience Ultima Online is.

 

[O'Brien]

On June 5th, the Ultima Online website has encountered a critical failure and lost it's database. We were able to restore its content up to February 2011 and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first.

Thank you for bearing with us.

Continue reading...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[G.v.P]

They use Drupal to post to the Herald. Its a content management system similar to Coranto, WordPress, etc. Its insanely easy to post, as you use a WYSIWYG method similar to a stripped down HTML editor. The Herald itself is just a mash of CSS and PHP, a theme.

Its the tired-looking theme that we all detest...along with the annoying lack of content.

My biggest complaint about the Herald was the removal of the search bar from the main page. Now at least all the pages linked from the homepage have the same CSS style. That's progress, to an extent, even if people don't prefer how it looks over the old site design. I prefer the old site as well.

And the guide page is back up: Playguide | Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online

 

[Llewen]

I'll post this again in this thread. How does a professionally hosted website for a major corporation like EA not have daily offsite backups of every database and all it's code?

 

[Nimuaq]

I prefer the old site as well.

 

[Llewen]

Wow, there's a blast from the past.

 

[Viper09]

Clearly they did have a back-up it's fully restored now, or close to it.

 

[startle]

Hey Nimuaq! See below:

Just sayin..........

 

[Nimuaq]

Hey Nimuaq! See below:


Just sayin..........

Since UO Herald News is not an actual user, it doesn't have profile posts. You should click on the "Postings" tab of the UO Herald News' profile, then click on the "Find all content by UO Herald News". The second and the third link somehow don't have the first underscore, but I fixed it and the links are now working.

 

[startle]

..... the links are now working.

Uh, not for me....

 

[Petra Fyde]

for some reason I'm not sure of the visible link didn't match the actual link. I think it's fixed now.

 

[Cetric]

On June 5th, the Ultima Online website has encountered a critical failure and lost it's database. We were able to restore its content up to February 2011 and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first.

Thank you for bearing with us.

Continue reading...

your most recent backup was february 2011....


i'd be fired if i couldn't restore our database to yesterday i think.

 

[phantus]

I doubt(hope?) the site is on their equipment. More than likely someone(Exec) figured out that website hosting has become so saturated the cost to maintain a site yourself is not the cheapest possible method to have one. This is EA we are talking about. Probably some company in another country that crashed and burned.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

With all the things we can say or speculate over though, I'd still like to know. What really did happen? Like oops, tripped over something havin' a sip of coffee, and splashed it all over that machin.. oh my goodness? I just blew up UO herald! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!​

​

Or, perhaps some crafty angry unmedicated pseudo deranged psycho that's hack savy just get angry and think tH15 15 1t! t1m3 to d0 1t! Soooo angrriiiee!!?! ARRRGGHH!! clickity clickity good bye uo herald!! And then we get to find out it was actually Exodus in the upcoming in game arc, and that gives us more motivation to actually beat him up.​

​

Meow what happened?​

 

[phantus]

I doubt(hope?) the site is on their equipment. More than likely someone(Exec) figured out that website hosting has become so saturated the cost to maintain a site yourself is not the cheapest possible method to have one. This is EA we are talking about. Probably some company in another country that crashed and burned.

Nope. Looked it up and all the (current) IP's are point to EA assignments. Unless they pointed somewhere before then this is all EA and poor DR framework. Sad really...

 

[Sauteed Onion]

With all the things we can say or speculate over though, I'd still like to know. What really did happen? Like oops, tripped over something havin' a sip of coffee, and splashed it all over that machin.. oh my goodness? I just blew up UO herald! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!​

​

Or, perhaps some crafty angry unmedicated pseudo deranged psycho that's hack savy just get angry and think tH15 15 1t! t1m3 to d0 1t! Soooo angrriiiee!!?! ARRRGGHH!! clickity clickity good bye uo herald!! And then we get to find out it was actually Exodus in the upcoming in game arc, and that gives us more motivation to actually beat him up.​

​

Meow what happened?​

Oh, sorry I might have spoiled the arc meow.

 

[O'Brien]

With all the things we can say or speculate over though, I'd still like to know. What really did happen? Like oops, tripped over something havin' a sip of coffee, and splashed it all over that machin.. oh my goodness? I just blew up UO herald! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!​

​

Or, perhaps some crafty angry unmedicated pseudo deranged psycho that's hack savy just get angry and think tH15 15 1t! t1m3 to d0 1t! Soooo angrriiiee!!?! ARRRGGHH!! clickity clickity good bye uo herald!! And then we get to find out it was actually Exodus in the upcoming in game arc, and that gives us more motivation to actually beat him up.​

​

Meow what happened?​

rofl
Maybe that psycho, errm Exodus, is holding the dev team hostage now and forced them to stop working. That would explain a lot.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

rofl
Maybe that psycho, errm Exodus, is holding the dev team hostage now and forced them to stop working. That would explain a lot.

Man quick, go look at Sneak Peek II and check out the pianos. If this is what Exodus does when he's holding devs hostage, I'm in!

 

[Viper09]

your most recent backup was february 2011....


i'd be fired if i couldn't restore our database to yesterday i think.

This is already old news. Check the other posting where they said they restored nearly everything...

 

[Barok]

This is already old news. Check the other posting where they said they restored nearly everything...

Keyword being "nearly"

And what they did restore they did the hard way, by adding it back onto the site piece by piece. That's not a proper restore, that's a hack job.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Most that I know of, keep an amount of backup in-house, with the rest is farmed out, whether local or in the sky. My guess was they had back to Feb in-house, and simply had to wait on the rest. They can't tell you that because it's an ubber secret thing they wouldn't want to spoil standard corp practices.

 

[Viper09]

Keyword being "nearly"

And what they did restore they did the hard way, by adding it back onto the site piece by piece. That's not a proper restore, that's a hack job.

You know this how? And the keyword "nearly" was my using, not theirs. If you read the recent post on the issue which everyone seems to be ignoring they said it was fully restored to the day before the incident. For all I know it was completely restored, I just said nearly because maybe they missed some old archived news. What I saw looked liked they got the new stuff fully restored which is the important as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Aurelius]

You know this how?

"Kai Schober
6 Jun 2012 12:02:56 EST
All the latest news and the archives have been restored on the website after yesterday's issues. Due to limitations in our publishing tool, some news articles bear two time stamps - one of today when they were restored and one of the original publishing date.
We continue to work on the other pages like the UO Guide or the Account Center information to bring them back up to date as fast as possible. Please let us know if you miss content.
Thank you for your support."

Nearly ... as in some stuff is still missing. They say so, very clearly. A 'backup' regime that needs people to add things back manually, and is still incomplete after five or more days, is extremely poor practice in any serious IT environment.

 

[Viper09]

Nearly ... as in some stuff is still missing. They say so, very clearly. A 'backup' regime that needs people to add things back manually, and is still incomplete after five or more days, is extremely poor practice in any serious IT environment.

Please refer yourself back to my post you only partially reply to as to why I chose to use the word "nearly."

But where do they say so clearly? It would seem like a common practice to simply ask people if they are missing anything after having to resort to a backup though, do you find anything missing? However like Barok, you don't say how it's obvious they did it manually.

 

[Aurelius]

Please refer yourself back to my post you only partially reply to as to why I chose to use the word "nearly."

But where do they say so clearly? It would seem like a common practice to simply ask people if they are missing anything after having to resort to a backup though, do you find anything missing? However like Barok, you don't say how it's obvious they did it manually.

"We were able to restore its content up to February 2011 and we'll continue to update the rest of the content as soon as possible, prioritizing publish notes first."

A properly automated process does NOT need someone to go back and gradually add data - which is what I refer to as 'manually'. A decent backup regime brings it all back.

And if you think 'nearly' is not covered by "We continue to work on the other pages like the UO Guide or the Account Center information to bring them back up to date as fast as possible." - which must mean they are NOT complete, as they are havingto 'bring them back up to date - then I have to give up, clearly we don't understand words in the same way at all.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

we have, imo, a pretty good automated BU process at the hospital. 2 clusters, each RAID - for close-in data (this is Just for Mail). Backups are moved regularly (1-2 times a wk) off site. Recovery is not just plug in an old SAN and hit synchronize. We're talking data spanning easily 10-15 years. There is no 'quick' restore, impossible. It's incremental, with certain periods getting preference because of urgency. Yeah, in the case where local clusters fail, there could be some recent data loss, but often, users have a copy stored either locally, or another network storage drives - if not, then it will have to be recreated, or lost. It's not easy, or quick, or cheap.

 

[Barok]

We are talking about a simple web site, not decades of user data. I bet the entire thing could fit on a 4 gig thumb drive.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

We are talking about a simple web site, not decades of user data. I bet the entire thing could fit on a 4 gig thumb drive.

I'd be surprised it'd take more than a gig meow.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

We are talking about a simple web site, ... I bet the entire thing could fit on a 4 gig thumb drive.

If they run the site from a separate drive, they deserve a loss now and then, chances are, it's virtual. Wonder what else went?

 

[Barok]

Out of curiosity I installed HTTrack (www . httrack . com) and downloaded the entire website.

www . uoherald . com holds about 25Mb of files.
(Total size downloaded after following all links offsite to places like www. uo . com, resources.ea.com, largedownloads.ea.com, etc. was 2.5Gb.)

There were several hundred errors and warnings about missing files, or incorrect file sizes etc., so they didn't succeed in restoring the entire site. Some things were lost.

(edit: stupid forums changed the link titles)

 

[RaDian FlGith]

"Kai Schober
6 Jun 2012 12:02:56 EST
All the latest news and the archives have been restored on the website after yesterday's issues. Due to limitations in our publishing tool, some news articles bear two time stamps - one of today when they were restored and one of the original publishing date.
We continue to work on the other pages like the UO Guide or the Account Center information to bring them back up to date as fast as possible. Please let us know if you miss content.
Thank you for your support."

Nearly ... as in some stuff is still missing. They say so, very clearly. A 'backup' regime that needs people to add things back manually, and is still incomplete after five or more days, is extremely poor practice in any serious IT environment.

Well, and let's not forget what this very announcement implies:

We had to re-enter every missing item manually. That is why it has two dates.

It's not as if it was restored through a non-manual, "Hey, we've got this backed up," process. At very least, it required them to copy and paste everything missing back into place.

And yeah, I've had jobs where if that's what it required me to do, I'd have been fired.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Out of curiosity I installed HTTrack (www . httrack . com) and downloaded the entire website.

www . uoherald . com holds about 25Mb of files.

(edit: stupid forums changed the link titles)

: D