Corruption of database

  • I recently had a disturbing thing happen to my database and I wonder if anyone can diagnose what might have happened please.

    I recently opened my blog and found that all the comments had stopped showing. When I examined the database in phpMyAdmin, I found that the comments were all still there, but the contents of the comment_post_ID field had been changed to zero for all the approved comments, so they are not now related to any post. Curiously, the contents of the spam and trash comments were still intact.

    I can restore the database from a backup (with a little trouble) but I want to understand why this happened. I had not accessed the database prior to this, and in fact had not written a post or a comments for a few days. The only thing I did, about the same time, was I updated the Genesis software I use to version 2.7. (I don’t know if the comments were affected immediately after the Genesis update or not, so this remains a possible cause, but not at all certain.)

    This wasn’t a random corruption as it turned all one field all to zero, which seems very systematic to me.

    I have contacted my host and StudioPress (who have developed the Genesis software) and neither believe their products have caused this. yet something caused it, and I want to try to understand so I can prevent it happening again.

    Has anyone got any ideas please?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter unklee

    (@unklee)

    It would really be helpful if there was someone with some ideas about this. Thanks.

    Sorry no specific ideas.
    Suggest that you archive your website access logs so that you can subsequently research if there have been irregular activities.
    Otherwise all you can do is restore from your backup and hope that it does not happen again, if it does you then have two examples to investigate.

    Thread Starter unklee

    (@unklee)

    Thanks for helping. I’m sorry, but where are the website logs that you mention?

    In your website hosting management login, there will be settings and access to server logs.
    If you need more specific directions then ask your website hosting technical support.

    Thread Starter unklee

    (@unklee)

    Thanks.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • The topic ‘Corruption of database’ is closed to new replies.