Lost images when upgrading ...

jeffa · August 25th, 2005, 03:08 PM

In the process of upgrading one of our forum sites from 4.7 to 5.13 using the upgrade.php app, there is a step that moves files. (4.85 step 2) Well, this particular site has so many images (about 3 gigs) that the browser 'timed out' during this step and we have about 15,000 or so images "missing."

Has anyone experienced this? We have the sight backed up, but this still puts us in a pickle.

Thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Chuck S · August 25th, 2005, 03:14 PM

Well I would double check by right clicking one of the missing images and seeing if you ran step3 more than once?

Note in step 2 can be ran as many times as needed but step3 only once

Basically if its whacked you can always restore the photos table entries again and rerun the script

jeffa · August 25th, 2005, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by omegatron

Basically if its whacked you can always restore the photos table entries again and rerun the script

Could you elaborate on this a bit? The "restore the photos table entries" part.

Thanks.

jeffa · August 25th, 2005, 03:47 PM

Also, does anyone know the reason for having to move files during that particular upgrade. This might help me understand how to fix my problem a little better.

Chuck S · August 25th, 2005, 06:52 PM

The 485/486 upgrade gets rid of the userid being prepended on the filename so the last step renamed the photos in the photos table thus you only run this once

The second step renames and moves the medium and thumbnail images into there own directories since we no longer make the images image-med.jpg and image-thumb.jpg

Thats why all the moving

Okay I mean restore the photos table meaning you would dump the current messed up photos table and restore with a backup of the photos table. You then can rerun any necessary upgrades.

With alot of photos this will take a while. I have had the upgrade take 6 hours on one install with 90000 images

jeffa · August 26th, 2005, 08:36 AM

Um ... why does the upgrade not first check to see if the user id has ALREADY been prepended to the filename? I see now that the database entries have the user id prepended twice, which means that i ran step 3 for upgrade 485 twice. My fault, but the upgrade should be more careful.

No offense, but restructuring the filesystem after a product has already been established is a Bad Idea. In this case, i can see the necessity due to hogging up too many inodes on the filesystem ... but in the least, don't you think a simple check to see if the user id has already been prepended would be helpful to prevent tacking it on a second or third time?

Another issue. Since you are now putting thumbs in dirs ... shouldn't each user have their own directory. Prepending to filenames is generally another Bad Idea. That's what directories are good for.

Sorry to vent ... but ... there you have it.

Chuck S · August 26th, 2005, 08:56 AM

No offense, but restructuring the filesystem after a product has already been established is a Bad Idea.

I would disagree on this one seriously since it is a change for the better. Every software product changes.

jeffa · August 26th, 2005, 09:03 AM

I didn't say it wasn't a change for the better -- i just said it was a Bad Idea. Bad Ideas, however, are necessary sometimes, but Good Software design typically involves deprecation, not outright deletion. One word: transactions. Bad Ideas can be Not So Bad Ideas when you throw in the ability to roll back. Sure, it is my responsibility to make backups (which i have), but MAJOR changes such as this are Bad Ideas because if they are not atomic, they will lead to Head Aches.

I still think a simple check to make sure that the user id had not already been prepended to the filename would be a good safety belt.

jeffa · August 26th, 2005, 09:29 AM

One thing i still don't understand is why the decision to prepend the userid to the filename? Why not simply create a directory for that user and store their images there? Doesn't prepending the userid to the filename recreate the same problem as prepending the word 'thumb' instead of using a seperate thumbnail directory?

Chuck S · August 26th, 2005, 10:02 AM

Hello The script from the beginning of time prepended the userid so creating a directory for every user in every cat was not the way to go. Thats just not how they built the application originally years and years ago.

jeffa · August 26th, 2005, 10:42 AM

But if you stored the images in a user's dir ... you wouldn't need the cat dir.

Hey ... i know, i know ... i'm just trying to understand the process (and i do tend to play Devil's Advocate) ... FWIW i have almost fixed my blunder with (get ready to wince) a Perl script. >

Thanks omegatron ... you have been very helpful and i really do appreciate your free time.