Website Disaster, Part 2

[jelliott]

Thanks to all of you for your help in getting me this far per my previous post.  Before firing the gun, I thought I'd run through what I'm doing, so as to save a lot of debugging time that is inevitable once I begin.

There are two vws backups I'm working with:  (1) a year-old backup with the current website (including htx and htm files), but without updated data, and (2) a current backup recovered using the rescue utility. This has recorded data up to 9/03/09.

I have done a very detailed side-by-side file comparison, looking at files, sizes, contents, etc.  Here's what I found:

1. The data directory of the recovered backup looks fine (daily, month, year) and uncorrupted.  The data tables are readable and complete thru 9/3/09.  (I note that the older copy has Excel files (.xls) that have data in them; the current backup files are empty.  However, the archive files of the recovered backup are much larger.)
2. The only other directory that is different is the setup directory.  This contains BIN files, and appears to create on each day.  I'm not sure what these are for.
3. Some icons, jpegs, and the .htm files of the root directory of the recovered backup copy appear corrupted.  The year-old backup does not have this issue.

Given this, my intent is to use the good year-old backup as my "base", and to replace its data directory with the updated version.  I will also replace the setup directory, although I'm not sure what this implies.  Comments?

If my memory serves me, the htx file in the root directory contains the html code that creates the associate htm file, and that current weather readings are then inserted and uploaded automatically to the web.  I assume somehow each new data point is logged in the "data" directory.

Bottom line:  I'm simply replacing the old data files with the new and crossing my fingers.  Any other worries I should look out for?  What's the role of the "setup" directory?  Should I leave it alone?

[Mark / Ohio]

If I recall correctly the setup folder contains all the user settings.  Which files to upload and when and where to put them.  Custom color and jpg images settings and the like.  I had corruption in that file once and Ed had me delete it so the program would build a new file.  Bad part was that it was like starting over with a new program.  Every setting that I had entered or changed over a couple years time had to be re-entered.

[sam2004gp]

After you get all of this fixed you might want to look into doing Multiple Full Copy backups of VWS each day.  I make 4 backups of my entire VWS folder each day, keeping a cumulative total of 80 full backups on my External Hard Drive at all times.  IE: 12:00 AM, 6:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 6:00 PM.   It has saved my butt a couple of times, after I royally screwed up something or a glitch developed in VWS. 

This is the great shareware program I use to do this, it's free, and not disabled in any way.
http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

[SylvaniaWeather]

Great program Sam!  I've been looking for something like that to backup my files.  Windows backup never seems to work right.  Thanks for the tip!

[sam2004gp]

Great program Sam!  I've been looking for something like that to backup my files.  Windows backup never seems to work right.  Thanks for the tip!

No problem always willing to help.  I also found it here on the forum through friendly help.

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=3797.0

[Garth Bock]

If I recall correctly the setup folder contains all the user settings.  Which files to upload and when and where to put them.  Custom color and jpg images settings and the like.  I had corruption in that file once and Ed had me delete it so the program would build a new file.  Bad part was that it was like starting over with a new program.  Every setting that I had entered or changed over a couple years time had to be re-entered.

I upgraded my original station on an old Dell GX620 before I moved it to my new Atom based mini computer. Upgrade went fine and the station ran fine. Followed the how to on moving to a new box....and somehow a file(s) in the setup folder got hosed. It kept coming up and saying that I had to run Weatherlink to set the serial port. So I de-installed\re-installed and then copied parts of the setup\config files...no go...same thing. I decided that I needed to refresh everything and I was short on time (painting the house) so I put my settings back in by hand.