PDA Avenue Calls It Quits

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pdaavenue.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.pdaavenue.com/</a><br /><br /></div>"It is with much sadness and regret that I inform you of the “demise” of PDA Avenue. On Saturday night, we experienced a catastrophic database failure. Simply put the database was gone. We still do not know if this was due to hardware error or an external attack. We lost the site. Everything is gone. Unfortunately, our most recent backup is several months old; meaning that even with a backup, most of the site is missing..."<br /><br />It's always unfortunate when a PDA site shuts down, because I know from first-hand experience how much effort goes into creating and running a site - shutting a site down is like losing a loved one in some respects. And being forced into it by data loss is even worse - I wish the crew at PDA Avenue the best and hope they find new pursuits they can be passionate about!

[Bajan Cherry]

This is indeed very sad. So much effort, time and pains wiped off because of h/w malfunction. My best wishes to Avenue folks and hope they find new avenues soon.

[Thinkingmandavid]

I remember when they put that on their website, it has been there for some time. It is really sad. I enjoyed posting there. I wish there was a way to help them stay up. YOu will be missed team.

[PR.]

It seems this not doing backups of your website is a bit common. Neowin for example a site with hundreds of thousands of members lost its site and only had a 5month old backup to go back to.

Remember a backup is for everything not just your PocketPC :wink:

[cessquill]

BACKUP! NOW!

[peterawest]

Even Google's cache doesn't have anything that they can go back too.

Too bad. :cry:

[Paragon]

Man that SUCKS!

That must really hurt, to put so much effort into something only to see it disappear. Have faith I'll sure some other opportunity will pop up to take its place.

Dave

[Shorty]

Seeing a site die through dataloss is always sad but knowing that the last backup was months ago is even worse. Having been part of a website that suffered a catastrophic death due to no backups, I can attest to it. The owner just shrugged his shoulders and called it a day 8O

Good luck to the PDA Avenue guys :) and for those running sites (Im pedantic over backups.. they are run twice daily :twisted:) .. learn to love the power of CRON & SQL dump :D

[Palmguy]

Wow..I can't believe it...those guys were the good ol' crew from the late PDABuzz...This really sucks! :cry:

[DavidHorn]

Hmm, yes, I should really start doing more regular backups of PocketGamer. Can anyone recommend a good solution for a Unix based system (Ensim) without simply dumping the entire contents of the drive to my computer? Something automatic, hopefully :)

[Shorty]

Do you have SSH shell access to your server?? :)

What platform are you running as well?? PHP/SQL? (im assuming your are using a *nix based system to utilise the apache/PHP/MySQL platform).

There are several ways with a NIX box. Do a database dump, then gzip & tar the whole site(with your sql dump) and download one compressed file :)

[peterawest]

The sun on Tuesday unleashed what appears to be the third most powerful flare in recorded history, a storm of charged particles that could hit Earth midday Wednesday with more effect than any since 1989, when power was knocked out to an entire Canadian province.

Jason: You better back up both of your sites right away. 8O

You never know what will happen, maybe another power outage in Canada. :oops:

[Duncan]

In defence of the PDA Avenue people (over backing up): making good, useful, restorable back-ups of PHP/MySQL databases is way more of a pain in the backside than it needs to be. A straight dump of the contents does not necessarily mean you have something that you can properly restore (I still have a back-up of FirstLoox from last year that has all the data in it but could not be restored when the time came).

[Janak Parekh]

Jason: You better back up both of your sites right away. 8O
We've been keeping backups for a while. We keep the last two weeks of backups of the MySQL database and the websites, and this is done nightly. Jason already had his site crash once years ago, so he knows what it means not to be backed up. It's very sad to hear what happened to PDA Avenue. :cry:

You never know what will happen, maybe another power outage in Canada. :oops:
The server's not in Canada, it's in a machine room somewhere in the US I believe. ;)

--janak

[Shorty]

Duncan..

That depends on how you do it more than anything else. I've found a CRON job doing a mysqlhotcopy, then tar & Gzip is totally painless :) With hotcopy, the tables are momentarily locked. This prevents the potential for data corruption. The newer SQL builds are faster than ever with this if you are on a decent machine :)

My advice: Just do a good ol' mysqldump (with --opt switch) at the shell once in a while if you feel really paranoid and want a SQL file as well as the raw myi etc...

[Duncan]

I've found a CRON job doing a mysqlhotcopy, then tar & Gzip is totally painless With hotcopy, the tables are momentarily locked. This prevents the potential for data corruption.

Oooh! Is this CRON freely available somewhere - sounds ideal!?

[Shorty]

CRON is the *nix version of Windows scheduled task :)

It runs in the background and you edit your Crontab file to make the server invoke a simple shell script.

I have examples of shell scripts for sqlhotcopy which you can edit and instructions on how to edit your crontab file, drop me a PM and Il hook you up.

Do you normally use PHPmyadmin to backup your db's?

[Duncan]

yeah - sorry - used a bit too much shorthand. It's a script I'm after (sadly I've not got the know-how to write one myself!). I'll send you a PM. THX!

PHPmyadmin just will not behave for me so I back up by manually entering the necessary info into PUTTY. I've been aware that I could automate the task - just not exactly how!

[Jhokur2k]

I have been backing up and restoring my MySQL databases via Webmin - straightforward and easy to use (yes I'm lazy and haven't learned the proper commands to use in the console :p).

[Shorty]

I have been backing up and restoring my MySQL databases via Webmin - straightforward and easy to use (yes I'm lazy and haven't learned the proper commands to use in the console :p).

Always works but I implore you to learn the basic shell syntax ;) One day if webmin died on you or your webserver stopped working on that port... you would need to know the shell ;)

[doogald]

That must really hurt, to put so much effort into something only to see it disappear.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but yes, it did hurt, a lot at first. I'm feeling numb more than anything now. So much work done; just about nothing to show for it, either.

That said, it was a great crew to work with, especially Alan, and I am honored to have had the chance to do so.

And, because I can't really say it on the site, thanks to all of you who were members. We had more than a great staff - we had a superb community, and I will miss my daily interactions with each and every one of you.

[Talldog]

Does anyone know where the PDA Avenue folks have gone?

[Thinkingmandavid]

I know some of them went to pocketloft because i post there as well. in fact some expdabuzzers such as myself :) well i still post a bit there, but it has changed so much :(

[JustinGTP]

No, that is not a good thing at all. One lost PDA site. But when he means he will see us in the future - a new website in the making maybe (insert question mark here, my school comp shows this (É) as the question mark)

-Justin.

[Tierran]

Hear hear, doog. I know exactly how you feel. :cry:

Thanks for the great times over the Ave everyone.

[Foo Fighter]

Sorry to see the Avenue paved over, pardon the pun. Another site gone forever. What's the community coming to? :(

[lapchinj]

Yeah it’s a shame. It was a really nice site and everyone will miss it. :cry:

What makes this really a shame is the fact that with a “complete” backup they could have been back up and in business the same day as the crash (if hardware is available). How much was that site worth? Was it worth the price of not investing in a very expensive $10G tape backup drive or even a cheaper $2G one (how about $1G on eBay)? How about offsite backup or backup services?

To put so much effort and sweat into a site and watch it evaporate before your eyes is not something that a price can be put on. And it continues to happen no matter how cheap the equipment or fantastic the software. Within seconds the sickening feeling sets in that the crash was disastrous and within the hour gloom sets in with the realization that you’re now out of business – a memory a mere statistic. (And everyone went down with the ship – employees also.)

I read an article in Infoworld or eWeek this year that gave statistics on the number of companies that were either in the WTC or the adjoining complex of buildings affected by the 911 terrorist attacks and how fast most were able to get back into business after the attacks. These companies lost everything and for most this as their only office. Each company’s ability to get back into business depended only on the quality of the backups that were kept. The major problems were finding office space and buying equipment not the data that drives the business. There were a number of business’s that were back in business within a couple of weeks. Tragedy doesn’t have to strike twice for the living.

Which brings to mind how many people are really serious about backing up their PDA’s? Products like Sprite Backup make it so easy and painless to do. How much is that simple PDA backup worth? Does your livelihood or someone close depend on that backup?

Jeff - :soapbox:

[Shorty]

lapchinj

Amen. :werenotworthy:

Couldn't have put it better myself. With DVDwriters cheap and tape drives on ebay for almost nothing, everything can be protected.

[mccollin]

Every time I see this happen, I become more religious about nightly backups. I can't imagine the pain you must feel of losing the site. I'm coming up on the first anniversary of pdaPhoneHome and it seems like it has been 10 years that I've been at it. The time to build a site and community is just huge.

If anyone uses cPanel, the database and site backups are automated pretty well... at least if you consider point and click automated. I've been unable to get a second drive on my server, which is what I really want setup, but at least I can manually run the backup and save it to my development machine. It is time, however, to test that backup on my test server... will do that tonight... :D

[Numsquat]

[quote="doogaldAnd, because I can't really say it on the site, thanks to all of you who were members. We had more than a great staff - we had a superb community, and I will miss my daily interactions with each and every one of you.[/quote]

Yep, that's the biggest loss :cry:

[Perk]

Seeing a site die through dataloss is always sad but knowing that the last backup was months ago is even worse. Having been part of a website that suffered a catastrophic death due to no backups, I can attest to it. The owner just shrugged his shoulders and called it a day 8O

Good luck to the PDA Avenue guys :) and for those running sites (Im pedantic over backups.. they are run twice daily :twisted:) .. learn to love the power of CRON & SQL dump :D

This whole story sounds a little fishy to me. I visited the site a few times, that's it. It seems increadible to me that it would shut for that reason ALONE. After all, this is the real world and peaople understand losses and move on.

At least they have some information remaining and there may be unique data that no other site has. Shouldn't it be shared or given to another site if they just pain quit?

[Mike Wagstaff]

This whole story sounds a little fishy to me. I visited the site a few times, that's it. It seems increadible to me that it would shut for that reason ALONE. After all, this is the real world and peaople understand losses and move on.

At least they have some information remaining and there may be unique data that no other site has. Shouldn't it be shared or given to another site if they just pain quit?

Unfortunately, it's not quite as easy as that. Many sites nowadays are heavily database-driven, often to the extent that virtually all their content is actually held in a database. This is exacerbated by the fact that many sites are underpinned by a (usually customised) database-based forum system that doubles up as a content management system.

Sadly, almost everyone (myself included) finds it far easier - and more enjoyable - creating and maintaining a site than investigating the least tiresome means of backing it up. After all, we all assume that catastrophic data failures only affect other people... until it actually happens to us.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Wow..I can't believe it...those guys were the good ol' crew from the late PDABuzz...This really sucks! :cry:

I remember when "The site formerly run by Wes Salmon" melted down. It was a choice between PDAenue and here. I chose here becuase of the existing community - but it was a close things and I watched the avenue grow and become something fine indeed.

A sad day. :cry:

[lapchinj]

Sadly, almost everyone (myself included) finds it far easier - and more enjoyable - creating and maintaining a site than investigating the least tiresome means of backing it up. After all, we all assume that catastrophic data failures only affect other people... until it actually happens to us.

The only problem I have with this is that it's so easy to do scheduled backups. Software is great (not always user freindly though) and once the backup job is set up just do a test once in a while by doing a restore to a temp directory. Doesn't take long and if it's done on a schedule every day and something happens and you miss a day or two don't sweat it the world won't come to an end (depending on the data that's being collected). You keep track of backup jobs by having the backup software email you any job that didn't run so you don't have to whatch the servers all day - just get back to what you like to do. Don't forget to take a complete tape set off site. You'll never regret the time spent. :D

Jeff -

[Chris Leckness]

I am wondering if they used the same host as PDAbuzz? They had a problem at the same time it seems.

I know what it is like, I ran a web promo info site at one time and we had only 2-3,000 members. We got hacked and the host had nothing to help us.

From that mistake, I make weekly backups of both of my servers (web HTML directories) and all the SQL databases. My part of this takes 1-2 hours manually, but well worth it. On the server side, the hosting company has an auto complete drive back up 2x a week.

Most importantly, BACKING UP is a MUST! You may NEVER need to use them, but when things like this happen you will thank (insert who you thank) that you did. I know that I would hate to start Aximsite up from scratch...

[doogald]

I'll also stress that testing backups every once in a while is just as important as backing up.

[lapchinj]

I'll also stress that testing backups every once in a while is just as important as backing up.
If a backup job is not being tested or it's not being QA'd (confirmed that what is supposed to be on tape is actually there) on a schedule then there may as well be no backups made.

I was once working on a team of programmers whose work was being backed up on a schedule and everything looked OK until the day came when we needed something to be restored. That's when operations found out that the person who set up the backup job only backed up links to files. There was a lot of screaming, flame throwing and crying going on when all we had were links. The backup worked but there was no QA.

Jeff -

[lapchinj]

... I make weekly backups of both of my servers (web HTML directories) and all the SQL databases. My part of this takes 1-2 hours manually, but well worth it.

I have a couple of SQL Servers that I'm responsible for the data on. Not the operations side but to QA the backups and other jobs that are running on them. This is not a bad setup since operations (in Chicago) has to figure out how to do what we (in NY) both agree that's needed and then we both sign off on it. I think they do the same with their other sites also.

It's my job every morning to check that everything that is supposed to be on tape is actually there. I'll take a quick look at the jobs that ran every day and at least once a week I'll restore the databases to another machine and give a quick look at the data to see if it all makes sense. But we make full backups not incrementals every night. This whole thing takes me also about 2 hours a week.

Jeff -

[theone3]

Sorry to see the Avenue paved over, pardon the pun. Another site gone forever. What's the community coming to? :Most people have moved to www.pocketloft.com (who are holding a competition to win a palmone T|E!) and a couple have gone over to pdalive

[doogald]

Forgive the following plug:

Just a quick note that a group of us from PDA Avenue, led by Alan Williams, have formed a new site that went live this week called The Daily Gadget. (http://www.dailygadget.com/ naturally).


"The Daily Gadget is a site dedicated to providing an online community for people who are excited about gadgets - gadgets of all kinds, from PDAs to Notebook computers to digital cameras to audio players to wine openers to - well, you name the gadget, you'll find a place to discuss it at the Daily Gadget.

"We will strive to make the Daily Gadget a great source of news and reviews for the gadgets in our lives. Most important, however, are the discussion forums where members like you can post comments and questions, reviews and opinions in a supportive, flame-free community of friends.

"Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you at the Daily Gadget!"


Oh, and yes; the site is being backed up. Frequently.