Geosword Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I run a World of Warcraft guild and as such have built a WoW Forum for our members to use. I maintain all the maintenance on the PHPBB forum for us and the other day one of my players sent me a message saying that her avatar image was gone and in fact all of the avatar images for everyone were gone. Perplexed, I went in to investigate only to find that not only are almost all the avatars gone for my players but many of the forums have been deleted out of their categories. Some users that were able to post have been set to Disabled, the default setting I have (No one can post until you are verified by me as a member of the guild). Apart from being hacked, I cannot figure out why all this data has been deleted. I am using the latest available PHPBB build from TCH (2.0.18). I am a bit upset at this devolopment. I will be checking my IP logs when I get home to see who has been snooping around my DNS. It's almost as if the MySQL database for the forums has been damaged. Any thoughts on this? I have a backup thankfully but it is two weeks old. A lot of data is going to be lost and I am sure I am going to have reupload the avatar pack I designed for the guild... blah... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 2.0.18 is not the most recent version of phpBB. While the one in cPanel may be that version it may not be the most current and it is up to the user to be sure they are running the latest versions. You can get the updates and apply them yourself directly from the phpBB web site. TCH has no control over the version that is included with cPanel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abinidi Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Updates to phpBB are pretty easy to do manually. I'm sorry to hear that your forum got hacked. That is a bummer. You might try porting to Simple Machines Forum (SMF). I don't personally love it, but there are some HUGE SMF fans out there. The benefit, in your case, for SMF is that they apparently have one-click installs where you can update your installation from within your control panel. The trouble with phpBB forums is that because of their popularity, they get attacked more often than les popular forums (kind of like the virus trouble that Windows XP has, opposed to the virus trouble that Mac OS or Linux have). Best wishes. Sorry you lost data. That's really lousy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Welcome to the forum, Geosword. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Welcome to the forums Geosword Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Welcome to the forums Geosword. You could also open a ticket with the helpdesk and see if we have a newer backup than what you have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevevan Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Welcome to the forums! That bites! I'd try the help desk backups before going with your data. As Rob says, they may have a more recent copy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geosword Posted March 22, 2006 Author Share Posted March 22, 2006 Thanks for the welcome guys. When I get home I'll open up that ticket and see if they can recover any of the data. I will also log in to my FTP site and check the avatars folder to see if the images in there were wiped. I've had image files get corrupted with PHPBB before causing certain parts of the theme layout not to load. I upload a new copy of the image file and it fixes it. The forums though is the killer. All the categories are still in place but a lot of forums have disappeared. Baring a stranger server malfunction, I can only conclude this was a hack job done to me. Talk about a bunch of bored losers. An insignifcant forums out the in the middle of no where in the net universe and some low life comes along and nukes it for the fun of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abinidi Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Geosword, you might consider doing a nightly backup cron job of your database. I have eight cron jobs for a particularly important database: 1. runs daily at 12:00 noon. Saves the backup file to the root directory with "daily" in the filename. 2. runs on Sunday morning at 3:00 AM. Saves the backup file to the root directory with "sunday" in the filename. 3. runs on Monday morning at 3:00 AM. Saves the backup file to the root directory with "monday" in the filename. 4-8 run once a week on Tuesday - Saturday at 3:00 AM. Each saves the backup file to the root directory with the day it was run (like 2 and 3). That way, if something happens to the database/site, I have DB backups for each of the last 7 days. I'm on my site often enough that I would notice database trouble before seven days has gone by. But you could add some cron jobs to happen every 1st or 15th of the month or whatever. If you wanted, you could create a back up for every day of the month. Then you'd have a backup for each of the last 30 days. That would be more extreme, in my opinion, but if your data is important to you and you are afraid you might not see DB trouble early enough, then you could have the MOST RECENT info before the site got into trouble. Just a suggestion for the future. We live and learn, no? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayson Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 when do I post for Cron help? I want so help setting it up. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abinidi Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 I'd point you to two posts first, then to the cPanel forum here at TCH: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...7&hl=cron+setup http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...4&hl=cron+setup http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...hp?showforum=21 Best wishes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abinidi Posted March 22, 2006 Share Posted March 22, 2006 Here is a thread that shows the specific command that I use for backing up my databases using the mysqldump command: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/forums/i...showtopic=10022 This one is simple, and doesn't require that you add any extra php files to your site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cajunman4life Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 I personally have a script set up to take a nightly backup of all my sites, and ftp them to a server I have at home. I usually only keep 30 days worth, but there for a while I had several months worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-JimE Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Welcome to the forums Geosword. Check your mysql database, if everything is there, it may just be a template hack. Backups are always good to have and sorry to hear about your forum problems. I believe the latest phpBB is 2.0.19, released back in Dec 2005. I suggest you get the upgrade files from www.phpBB.com. You can also sign up for an email to be sent to you when the next update arrives. I choose to use phpBB because I believe its better then many others out there. JimE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geosword Posted March 23, 2006 Author Share Posted March 23, 2006 Welcome to the forums Geosword. Check your mysql database, if everything is there, it may just be a template hack. Backups are always good to have and sorry to hear about your forum problems. I believe the latest phpBB is 2.0.19, released back in Dec 2005. I suggest you get the upgrade files from www.phpBB.com. You can also sign up for an email to be sent to you when the next update arrives. I choose to use phpBB because I believe its better then many others out there. JimE Hands down PHPBB is the best I have seen out of all the ones I tinkered with. The flexibility of customization and ease of use sold me. Now if we can just pass the Death-Hack Law that puts Hackers on Computer Death Row the world would be a better place. I didn't a chance to look at everything last night but I will when I get home today and get this monster fixed. I wish the version of PHPBB in PHP-Nuke was up to date too so I could use it instead of the stand alone PHPBB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-JimE Posted March 23, 2006 Share Posted March 23, 2006 Hello Personnelly I have seen more php-nuke problems then phpBB. You may want to have a look at http://www.mx-system.com/ This sits ontop of phpBB (no modifications to be made) and with a little graffting, can look very good indeed! JimE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geosword Posted March 26, 2006 Author Share Posted March 26, 2006 Hello Personnelly I have seen more php-nuke problems then phpBB. You may want to have a look at http://www.mx-system.com/ This sits ontop of phpBB (no modifications to be made) and with a little graffting, can look very good indeed! JimE There is a conspiracy against me! LOL! So I went to check out the mxBB system. Looked really good. Was going to give it a try as you suggested and clicked on the download link and.... Their site crashed. Now I can't get to it. Figures, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-JimE Posted March 27, 2006 Share Posted March 27, 2006 Hello, Lol, they have been tweaking alot recentley. You can download the core files here: http://www.mx-system.com/index.php?page=4&...tegory&cat_id=3 JimE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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