URGENT: Server HD Failed - DB Restore Help Needed

[MustangLisa]

I have a dedicated server and yesterday the hard drive failed, with the only thing saved as the database for my forums. The server company put in a new hard drive so I'm starting from scratch now. I've installed the vB software and configured the saved database to it, and that went fine. But I am having some issues. There are mysql errors at the top of the forums, which I expected since I haven't installed all the hacks I had installed prior to the hard drive loss. The template and everything looks fine with the forums, though. BUT, as the admin, I cannot log in. I sent to reset my password and still couldn't log in. I tried this with 3 other user accounts with no success. So, I'm stuck here without a way to get logged into vB and need some help. The server company says the database was not damaged, so I am looking for some help. Any ideas of what to try next? If anyone is a pro at this and can help, please PM me as I'd be glad to hire some help for getting this all set up right and making sure things are squared away to run smooth. We're on the Big Boards list and I need some better help now and going forward too.

Thanks!!

[Lynne]

I think what you want to do is upload the tools.php file from your do_not_upload file and then reset the cookie path. See if that works. If it does, don't forget to remove the tools.php file afterwards.

[MustangLisa]

I think what you want to do is upload the tools.php file from your do_not_upload file and then reset the cookie path. See if that works. If it does, don't forget to remove the tools.php file afterwards.

Thanks for the fast response. I tried that and got this message when I tried to log in with one of the regular user accounts:

Unable to add cookies, header already sent.
File: /home/bmcforu/public_html/includes/class_core.php
Line: 3075


The forums don't even recognize my admin account (user ID 1) or the email associated with it. I tried the "Reset admin access for a user" option in the tools.php 9and entered my admin name) and it returned a message that there is no such user. I think something is wrong with this database, but I'm not a mySQL guru enough to sort this one out.

[MustangLisa]

After being able to open the forums through the tools.php, I see that all the users who were in a usergroup other than Registered no longer exist. Their posts show their names, but not postbit data and no profile linked to it. Their names are not in the user table and I cannot login with any of them. The hosting company stands by their earlier position that it's very unlikely the database was damaged in the hard drive failure.

[FishMRC]

If you have a dedicated server, do you not have hardware based drive mirroring?

It might be worth arranging if you dont. It will stop you having to do all this extra work next time.

Fish

[Lynne]

After the hd failure, did you try to repair the database at all?

[MustangLisa]

If you have a dedicated server, do you not have hardware based drive mirroring?

It might be worth arranging if you dont. It will stop you having to do all this extra work next time.

Fish

I'm setting up RAID now, but we didn't have it before. We did have back-ups running, luckily.

After the hd failure, did you try to repair the database at all?

Yes, I made a back-up of the database and then did a repair, all prior to posting.