Forum:Database erasure prevention

I read in the Wikipedia article on Memory Alpha (here) that:
 * "Operations [at Memory Alpha] continued smoothly until March 23 [2004], when the site's database was accidentally erased during an upgrade of the MediaWiki software. The only backup available was six weeks out of date; nonetheless, the project moved forward undaunted."

Do we have proper measures in place to prevent this from happening again? --From Andoria with Love 02:20, 28 Dec 2005 (UTC)
 * Well back then, I gather, Memory Alpha was a separate site just using MediaWiki software. Currently, the site is operated by/with Wikia and Wikicities, and has the support of Wikimedia technicians, so the chances of erasure are extremely lower than they were a year and a half ago.--Tim Thomason 02:37, 28 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Whew! Okay, that's good to hear. Thanks. :) --From Andoria with Love 03:15, 28 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I started a similar discussion at our forum, but there was not much response to it. I found out that the database (only written content, not the pictures) is available for download via the link on my userpage (or here). I started to download the dumps four month ago, repeating it every month. At the moment I'm writing this, the 12/05 backup is downloading to my HD, for all language editions. I might be the only one who is doing this. As far as I know, the daily backups of wikicities are stored at the same serverfarm (Seattle?), on a backup server. So if the place is erased by a hurricane (or Klingons?), there will be left our backups only. --Memory 20:08, 28 Dec 2005 (UTC)
 * As a reseller for VERITAS/Symantec Backup Exec I would love to sell them some Backup Exec licenses ;-) --Funkdubious 21:21, 31 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * The link on Memory Alpha:Database download seems to point to a compressed SQL dump containing one file "cur_table.sql". I'd be wary to trust this file to be of any use, as it may well not be up-to-date. The last MediaWiki version to use cur_table as the name of a database table for the current revision of articles was MediaWiki 1.4.* - the current MediaWiki version is 1.7 and that table doesn't exist anymore under that name or in that exact format.
 * I've tried downloading the Uncyclopedias, and there the situation really isn't much better. I'm having problems; the full revision history for en: is showing as available in uncompressed XML only (6.4 gigabytes) and download fails at byte 0. Their images.tar file is also badly out of date, containing many images deleted months ago as not in use in any of the Uncyclopedias. It's better than nothing, but I wouldn't want to rely on it to reconstruct the entire project were this necessary. --carlb 18:51, 28 July 2006 (UTC)