Kudos to Dreamhost for outsmarting my attempt to delete critical data.
I was cleaning up some “test†sites over the weekend and in the process I was deleting MySQL databases that were no longer needed. I noticed last night that one of my Joomla based sites wasn’t working. I was getting a message saying that the site was offline and that I should contact my administrator, which would be me. I had a moment of panic, when I also noticed in the fine print at the bottom of that message, that the site could not connect to the database.
Yikes! I must have deleted it when I was cleaning up! Oh noes!
OK. After the initial panic passed, I decided to go and see if there was any kind of recycle bin that I could get my poor discarded database back from. I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when I found that their MySQL management site includes just that functionality.
I dug into the recycle bin and, sure enough, there was my missing database. I selected it from the list and told the system to please put it back. Almost immediately, the database was back. I then noticed that the site still didn’t work. Same error.
Guh…
OK, so maybe the recycle bin only restored the database structure and not the data. Let’s go looking for a backup/restore utility. (Not that I had ever actually backed it up, mind you.) Sure enough, I clicked on the option to restore a backup and found that Dream host had a complete history of about five versions that I could choose from. I restored the most recent one and… viola! The site was back online.
Thanks, DreamHost, for watching my back.
I’ve been in IT for over 25 years. As a result, I drink way too much coffee, my eye occasionally twitches, and no I will not fix your computer. I’m also a photographer, videographer, and an elder at my church.
Did I mention I like coffee?