Site problem solved

Due to some apparent data corruption in the MySQL database that stores the page and post content for this web site, the static pages were temporarily unable to be viewed. The data appeared to be there but it could not be displayed.

I was able to fix this problem by restoring the MySQL database files for this web site from backups that were three days old. Newer backups that I tried were also corrupted. After copying the data from the backups I make every day with a script I wrote that uses the rsync command, I restarted the MySQL database daemon and everything was back to normal. Unfortunately I did lose a couple posts but everything else including all of the static pages was there again. And no reboot was necessary!

The content of the missing posts was short and basically stated that I have finished revising the proofs of my book, “The Linux Philosophy for SysAdmins.” Other than that nothing is missing.

My forthcoming book has a chapter entitled, “Back up Everything – Frequently,” which covers backups in some detail and includes a link to a GitHub repository with a copy of my backup script. I was able to recover from this problem – and prevent it from being a complete disaster – because I followed the tenets of the Philosophy that I write about in my book.

I hope you will read it when it comes out this September 21.