suppose it must depend which box you're on - i think i'm on 15....

Yeah, it's just started happening, and to a lot of users all at once.

Been reading this thread with much interest as this seems to have happened to me too.

Today I have had 4 emails from members of my forum telling me that they can't log onto the forum.

When I had a look I found that thier post's now show their username, but that they are a guest. (It looks like there are at least 6 that this has happened to, and everything seemed fine last night up to midnight!)

They tried to re-create the username, but it won't let them as the username already exist's.

What can I do here? My users have loads of messages posted, and I am told some of them have loads of PM's to that they don't want to lose.

FYI I am also on Heart Internet, and I am using version Platinum 9.7 - Dunno if it makes a difference, but I am on box web16

Any help would be great - I'm no techno wiz so please try to keep it as simple as possible.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Same problem here... they have had a disk space issue... I have asked them to upload a backup from the previous day so I can get back to at least where I was 24 hours ago.

Heart have given me a zip file of the whole forum - what bits do I need to restore, or should I do the whole thing?

Thanks again!

I generally look in my members folder for all the dat files that are 0 in size and replace them... then see what other files there are that have been zeroed.

Thanks so much for your help!

I was scared I'd have to re-do the whole forum, but just did the 0 sized files, and it seems fine.

Thanks V V Much!

I can't believe it - it has happened again!

I had such a hard time yesterday; after retsoring the files mentioned I then had my users telling me the passwords wouldn't work, so I did a password reset via the admin part of the site. However they didn't get the email, so then I had to manually reset their passwords, and email everyone affected (Luckily only about 9 users!)

Took me almost all day to get it to a decent state, then it all happens again!

Frustrating?

You bet!

I just had a reply from Heart Internet. Looks like they are blaiming E-Blah completely, and don't accept it is anything to do with them.

So if it is E-Blah can someone help me to ensure it doesn't happen again please?

Message from Heart below:

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply. The deletion of your forum is due to the way eBlah works. eBlah writes data in a flat file rather than a database. If it thinks disk space is getting low (even if it is not) it will remove threads or even the file itself.

Please note that the retrieval of a backup was done out of goodwill as we usually do not do this for customers. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions below regarding this :

"7.2 Heart Internet carries out data backups for use by Heart Internet in the event of systems failure. Heart Internet do not provide data restoration facilities for individual customers. Even though every effort is made to ensure data is backed up correctly Heart Internet accepts no responsibility for data loss or corruption."

I would recommend you consider upgrading the forum software that doesn't use flat file for user data but a database instead. Or if you do decide to stick with eBlah that you make a regular backups yourself.

We do have a backup from the site last night which we can make available or the tar ball made available to you is still present.

Best Wishes
Tak Tran
Heart Internet Support

Quoted Text

If it thinks disk space is getting low (even if it is not) it will remove threads or even the file itself.

E-Blah does nothing of the effect.

It is not related to E-Blah, I can assure you.

Yesterday they were admitting (based on a reply by another member) to a loss of disk space.  I would read the entire first page of this thread first.  Files are locked when reading/writing, there can be no files "deleted" unless there is no space left on the device to write them to (or it loses connectivity, such can be the case with network drives).

I would like to add that if it were "If it thinks disk space is getting low (even if it is not) it will remove threads or even the file itself" then it would be affecting every E-Blah users that have large forums on all hosts not just Heartinternet. I have known this to happen on several occassions and on different hosts and it has always been diskspace issues on the host and no other reason.

He did finally (sort of) agree it was their fault.  Reply as follows:

Thanks for the reply. There wasn't a server problem, however there was a issue where the NAS drive was filling up as mentioned earlier which we made accommodations for. This could of resulted in the problem you were having but it is due to the way the script was written.

So looks like you were right all along! I hate it when these companies try to fob us off with lame excuses, and always try to blame someone else.

Anyway - did another partial restore, and all looks well now. (Except for the one new member who joined last night - don't think I can get her ID running again - unless any of you know how.)

Also, if it still occurs, NAS - Network Attached Storage - means that if there is a network problem, something can also happen (especially if there is heavy network usage).