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RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - deanhills - 10-01-2018
(10-01-2018, 11:20 AM)xdude Wrote: @deanhills
That's nearly 10 years of data! So since you download those as static pages it will take lots of space I guess. If there's a way to take it's data base .. I guess it's already gone if site went down in May. This is one reason I like about social media. We can find a way to be in touch with people who are far away from us. I'm really sad about what happened to Frihost specially to the forum.
You might have to download all those data from VPS to your PC time to time. Better not wait till you download the whole thing. But I can't think of anyway to restore it as a forum though.
The last meaningful contact with the owner of Frihost was in 2014. It's his preference to be completely anonymous and we've learned to respect that.
You're right though. One does need the database to create a meaningful representation of the Forum. I may have to give up on this project.
Possibly it should be enough to have the backup image and just to keep a link to it alive. Looks as though 27 March 2018 has been the last time when a copy was taken of the Frihost Forum. Although during the weekend the last copy was 24 February. Wonder whether they are a few months behind - and maybe we'll still get a May copy. Will keep checking up on it.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - humanpuff69 - 10-02-2018
about the storage concern they use a slow storage , really slow . i used to navigate through the old website and it took longer than any other website . it probably using a hard drive or there is a chance it use tape drive storage but who knows . ssd for storing espescially the pci express one isnt viable for storing archive of many website
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - xdude - 10-03-2018
@deanhills
Did you guys have access to Admin functions of the forum or for database backups ? I guess that's the only way to do something about getting the forum online again. I guess there is no way to claim the domain or hosting the forum under it again even if you able to recover a backup copy. Since there is no way to sort out Nameservers.
I still can't grasp the fact there wasn't a single person in forum who knew him personally or had a direct contact with him. After all these social media and communication methods. or He must be quite a secretive person.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - deanhills - 10-04-2018
(10-03-2018, 03:03 PM)xdude Wrote: @deanhills
Did you guys have access to Admin functions of the forum or for database backups ? I guess that's the only way to do something about getting the forum online again. I guess there is no way to claim the domain or hosting the forum under it again even if you able to recover a backup copy. Since there is no way to sort out Nameservers.
I still can't grasp the fact there wasn't a single person in forum who knew him personally or had a direct contact with him. After all these social media and communication methods. or He must be quite a secretive person.
No one other than the owner has access to Frihost Admin panel. It's not a typical Forum by any interpretation of a phpBB Forum that you and I know. The owner in 2005 had great fun with completely reprogramming phpBB 2.0. He had it such that only he could do the major inputs for Admin changes including backups. Also it was not possible to upgrade it as we would upgrade our Forums. It was never upgraded from 2.0 as it would have been a horrific job to do - he'd have to recode a lot of things and after 2013 he didn't have the time to do that. It was a terrific panel though in its hey day. At the time when he was 100% focused (while he was a student) he had the Forum such that hosting could be created from the panel as well. For a while there were other Admin who had access, but as time went on and by 2014 when the servers were relocated from the US to Germany he was the only one with access to three of the servers including the server with the Forums on it.
The greatest problem happened during mid-2014 when the Servers had to be moved in a great hurry from a Data Centre in the US to Germany. Do you remember the Burstnet Data Center scandal of Scranton, Pennsylvania in July 2014? Burstnet used to be very popular for Admin from Europe as well as it was good quality very low cost center. Then its owners sold it quick-haste to some one who didn't know what they were doing. They tried to move all of the servers to North Carolina, at only a moment's notice, such that quite a large number of the Admin lost complete access to their servers and data. The owner of Frihost was lucky, took about 2 weeks down, but at some or other point he was able to get access, and then had to move all of the servers post haste. He did it to a really solid Datacentre in Germany.
Problem was however that the owner needed to do lots of retooling and coding of the Forum to make all of its functions work again including possibly backups, and he never got to doing that because he didn't have the time. There were a number of members who had joined in 2006 who couldn't get access to their hosting accounts as the hosting accounts had been hand coded. Existing members who needed to reset passwords couldn't do so and couldn't access their Forum accounts. Maintenance requests to the owner went completely unanswered. I get a feeling that maybe the lack of retooling also affected the backups. Like a certain amount of retooling had to be done to get backups to be taken and maybe there had been no backups taken since 2014 after the server move. So who knows, maybe the owner had already decided in 2014 if he couldn't find the necessary time for retooling the Forum, that if the Forum went down, that that would be the end. Miraculous that it lasted until May 2018.
The above is just a calculated "guess" of course. No one of the staff has a clue really. I could be wrong of course as well.
I do think however that possibly no backups were taken since 2014 and that at some or other point a decision (without it really being a conscious decision maybe more procrastinated decision) may have been taken to let Frihost go if it should "melt down". I still hope that the staff will be contacted before the hosting comes to an end. The hosting is pretty awesome. Ironically the best its ever been including during the best of Frihost Forum times. So there's lots to be thankful for.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - xdude - 10-06-2018
Well I remember Bonding telling about changing code but I only noticed things related to That points and forum cash system. Rest of the modifications were related to the portal. Things like Hosting Account info page etc. I didn't notice any medications towards forum it self. Did he tell anything like that ? I do have my own forums and I also make modifications but as a standard we don't touch core functions or those codes. Because these things always change along with every official update. I think if someone could salvage the database it could have been easily converted into one of the latest versions of phpBB. Im not talking about everything but at least most important data like members , posts etc. Of cause since nobody had a way to take a DB backup it doesn't matter anyway.
Indeed FriHost had a great run while it's peak. Servers were preforming great and rarely had a downtime.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - deanhills - 10-06-2018
(10-06-2018, 08:21 AM)xdude Wrote: Well I remember Bonding telling about changing code but I only noticed things related to That points and forum cash system. Rest of the modifications were related to the portal. Things like Hosting Account info page etc. I didn't notice any medications towards forum it self. Did he tell anything like that ? I do have my own forums and I also make modifications but as a standard we don't touch core functions or those codes. Because these things always change along with every official update. I think if someone could salvage the database it could have been easily converted into one of the latest versions of phpBB. Im not talking about everything but at least most important data like members , posts etc. Of cause since nobody had a way to take a DB backup it doesn't matter anyway.Bondings is the only one with backups - at one point I had gone round to all of the Admins that I managed to get hold off. No one else has a copy of the database. Again, the Forum is not what you'd expect it to be - it's personally owned and administered. Likely there was an easy way to do the backups when Frihost was still active and all the staff attended, but because the Forum was no longer functional it possibly needed the retooling first before the backups could be taken. Like other functions weren't working either if you checked the number of posts and members that are recorded at the bottom of the Forum page stopped at July 2014.
Indeed FriHost had a great run while it's peak. Servers were preforming great and rarely had a downtime.
Back to the topic - I tried to check up on backups today, and when I checked with the Wayback Machine I got a blank page. Are others getting the same thing?
https://web.archive.org/web/*/frihost.com
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - tryp4vps - 10-11-2018
(10-06-2018, 10:48 AM)deanhills Wrote: ...... Back to the topic - I tried to check up on backups today, and when I checked with the Wayback Machine I got a blank page. Are others getting the same thing?
https://web.archive.org/web/*/frihost.com
Try:
http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=frihost.com
It will return you result in json format, if a given url is archived and accessible in the Wayback Machine.
At my end it does show me:
Code:
{"url": "frihost.com", "archived_snapshots": {"closest": {"status": "200", "available": true, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20180327035244/http://www.frihost.com:80/", "timestamp": "20180327035244"}}}That means the latest snapshot of frihost.com has a timestamp of 20180327035244, which is March 27th, 2018.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - deanhills - 10-12-2018
(10-11-2018, 11:03 AM)tryp4vps Wrote: Try:
http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=frihost.com
It will return you result in json format, if a given url is archived and accessible in the Wayback Machine.
At my end it does show me:
Code:{"url": "frihost.com", "archived_snapshots": {"closest": {"status": "200", "available": true, "url": "http://web.archive.org/web/20180327035244/http://www.frihost.com:80/", "timestamp": "20180327035244"}}}
That means the latest snapshot of frihost.com has a timestamp of 20180327035244, which is March 27th, 2018.
Thanks for the quality response @tryp4vps. When I started this project at end of September the last timestamp was in February. Then at the end of my project when I checked again it had moved to the beginning of March. The snapshot seems to change all of the time and probably will get close to May 11 when Frihost was up and running the last time. Also the downloads are not consistent. If you read feedback and comments by people who have tried the script, there is no absolute complete predictable result. I get a feeling that the Wayback Machine has its own way of dealing with people who are trying to download content without asking them first. The result can never be completely predictable and will never be 100% perfect. BUT for fun and for just wanting to keep a less than perfect snapshot it's doable.
RE: Wayback Machine - Internet Archive - Golden - 10-23-2018
I remember Post4VPS back then, it hasn't changed a lot lately. It still has the same blue colour.