How to restore my forum from a mirror copy?

[smdani]

My Server was attacked by a hacker, and my provider decided on is own to restore the whole system, formatting and reinstalling it
Fortunately we have daily backup for the entire server (system included), and we didn’t lost anything, I hope so.

My question is: Which are the steps that I have to do to take my forum back to the last running point (themes, configuration, plugins, database, etc)?

It’s necessary to reinstall the forum and redo all changes or may I restore it by copping every thing at the right location?

Thanks for your interest

[Darkblade]

Well let's see, my thread I have posted on vB.org should be grealty a help to you...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=106935

[smdani]

For sure, your how to, will help us a lot. Many thanks Josh!

But before of that (or after, don’t know), must we reinstall vbulletin, or only copy every file from the backup?
I don’t how the vbulletin program deals whit the operating system and if it makes any changes or could work with a simple copy from the backup, apart from the database that we will migrate as darkblade points us.

We will save many time if we don’t need to reinstall the forum system but only do the changes needed to the system.

We are hosted at a Red Hat Linux system, if more info is needed we will provide you

Thanks again from me and my forum team and users

[smdani]

Sorry for my insistence, but any one could point me on how to make the changes needed in the operating system to restore my vbulletin?

I want to know, what changes the program make at the system, and what things will work if I directly copy my backuped files to the clean system

If you don’t know what I mean please let me know. As you can see my English is quite poor, but I will do my best to explain it in other terms

[Steve Machol]

You shouldn't have to do anything with the operating system. What you need to do is backup and restore the database. (P.S. I provided you with these instructions in your support ticket.)

The only consistently reliable method of backing up and restoring a database is with shell access via telnet or ssh. Please see the instructions here:

Backup:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_backup

Restore:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_restore

This is because backing up with a PHP script like that in the Admin CP or phpMyAdmin can result in PHP timeout errors and an incomplete backup file.

If you don't have telnet or SSH access, some people have reported success with these scripts:

MySQLDumper:

http://www.mysqldumper.de/en/index.php

MySQLHotxcopy:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134821&highlight=mysqlhotcopy

Bigdump:

http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php

[smdani]

Thanks Steve then I assume that I have to copy every file from my backup to the new hard drive (without reinstall vbulletin) and then restore the database, and everything will work again like one week ago do

Only few problems:

- My old hard drive was removed by my provider without the possibility of backing up the database like in the tutorial. Now my provider has temporally mount the old hard drive as slave of the new one

- The backup I have, consists on a direct copy of whole server from one hard drive to another. And as I said, I have access to the old hard drive too, but I can’t boot from it, only access to the files. Then I don’t know if the database (not a database backup but the original database) is located somewhere in the file system. If it’s the case I’ll be able to do what you suggest me, but I’m not sure that it would be possible to backup a database from a hard drive mounted as slave from another, or from one directory where the old files were. I can access by putty to my server

Open your SSH/Telnet client and log into your website. The command line prompt you will see will vary by OS.
For most hosting companies, this will bring you into the FTP root folder.

May I access the database just by going to the FTP root folder?

As you can figure I’m not the person in charge of those technical things and my ignorance on how a database works and stores is quite big, as this I’m asking such a stupid questions but I have to solve it on my own, and quick learn the basics to do this restore, as many of my technical teammates are on holidays and I can’t contact them

P.S. I provided you with these instructions in your support ticket.

how can I review this ticket?. I assume that you are talking about some support you gave to my teammate Daniel who was the one in charge of this user account for many time, but since few months I’d take his place as smdani, but I’m not really him

Thanks for your patience and your assistance

[Steve Machol]

Based on your description I have no way of knowing what your backup contains. It's possible it includes the vB files but not the database. If that's the case then I'm afraid you will need to either make a backup of the database or start all over.

The database is *not* accessible via FTP. You need root server access to locate the actual db files.

Your support tickets are listed at the bottom of this page:

http://members.vbulletin.com/membersupport_contactform.php

[smdani]

You need root server access to locate the actual db files

¿what do you mean? I can connect via putty as root to the server but then what have to do if my server has 2 hard drives, the master with the OS fresh installed and the slave where I have the old server hosted with all the files and may be the database too. ¿May I import it from there, and how?

[Steve Machol]

What is the question and confusion? Is there any reason you do not want to make a backup of the database via the recommended way?

[smdani]

Yes, I want to do the back up but don’t know how when the database is stored in a slave disk, not the primary

Sorry for my confusing explanation

[Steve Machol]

Have you tried the backup instructions yet?

[smdani]

The manual says that I must run this
mysqldump --opt -Q -u dbusername -p databasename > /path/to/backupname.sql

But there is no database on my server since it was reinstalled. The point is that my provider replaced my old hard drive with new one to reinstall in it the operating System, and then mounted the old hard drive as slave from the new one in order let us recover our data. My question is if I could backup my database in this situation from the slave hard drive where my old database must be some where

[Steve Machol]

Run that on the server where the database resides. Or you can try the -h option, assuming that the remote server allows this connection.

mysqldump --opt -Q -h servername -u dbusername -p databasename > /path/to/backupname.sql

[smdani]

Thanks again Steve,
Last night we tried it but is useless as the server is the same with two hard drives, we also tried going to the right location to execute that comand but is not working at all

We had a really backup of the database (name.sql) which is some days old when we import it as the manual says it works perfectly.
After that we found where the database stores and tried to copy, via putty, all its files and subdirectories from the old hard drive to the new one, and it seams that is working since yesterday night, with no problems, well only a few, but their could not be just about the database

¿do you know what kind of trouble may be occur by doing this copy?

[Floris]

If you have the .sql dump you can make a new db and import it.. update the files config.php to point to this new db and you're done. I don't see why you need to copy files again after an import.