Scan database, all album data removed

mixylplik3 · March 7th, 2006, 11:03 AM

After moving Photopost to a new subdirectory (from /img to /forum/img) and changing all the links (in both the config files and in the Photopost "settings" table), the database got scanned to find missing thumbnails. Since the photo storage link (which was missed) still had the old location of the data directory, it didn't see the images and therefore cleaned out all the album info.

So now I'm left with a blank gallery, but all the images are on the server. Is there a way to rebuild this album data? If not, is there at least a way to get images belonging to users to show up for them somehow? There is no backup.

Chuck S · March 7th, 2006, 01:57 PM

The only way to do this would be to restore the photos mysql table from a backup and then correct your path in admin storage options and you will be fine.

mixylplik3 · March 7th, 2006, 04:04 PM

That's what I was hoping not to hear. I have an ancient backup database that is pre-vB 3.5. I suppose I could run the upgrader on that and have a chunk of the images show up and let people sift through the rest. Better than nothing.

Chuck S · March 7th, 2006, 04:51 PM

Thats why it is always suggested to do backups. That way if you make a mistake you can restore.

mixylplik3 · March 9th, 2006, 11:10 AM

Backups are usually in place, just not this time.

I have been sifting through all the data I have, and I am starting to think there might be a way to rebuild the data. All the album owners/names are intact, so it looks like I have all my albums but they are all empty. Since each album has a unique ID, and each ID corresponds to a folder with a user's images- wouldn't it be possible to author a repair script which will scan this information and rebuild the necessary data? I don't know enough about how Photopost links a user to files on the hard drive, but I have this information- it just needs to be connected.

Is this an impossible line of thinking? Photopost is a pain to work with, but hopefully I can work through this the hard way.

Chuck S · March 9th, 2006, 11:13 AM

There is no way to rebuild the photos table just from files. There are titles descriptions usernames userid's all which you can not get from files in a data directory.