Host Ran Upgrade, Lost Everything

As an aside, this information may help someone, but requires that you have more access to the server than usual with shared web hosting accounts since the mySQL files are usually not physically located where shared web hosting account holders can get to them via SSH.

You can do a mySQL database backup via SSH using the mysqldump command, and replace it on the server, also via SSH. It sounds like this is what willfulexpose has, since his file is named “localhost.sql”. If you have this kind of server access, you can also run a periodic backup from cron, which will save you from having to remember to do it regularly.

I used another method when moving my blog from one server to another: I simply installed WP on the new server, and then FTPed the mySQL DB files to the new server. Worked like a champ. Who knew? So, if you’ve got FTP access to the mySQL folders, there you go.

Thanks Diane. I don’t think I have all the access you did, but someone surely does.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even inspired to think about these things until after the problems began. It’s a long story, but basically my host offered to do the upgrade, at which point I made a backup. but then they stopped contacting me about it for weeks, and never confirmed that they would even do the move. I assumed they forgot my upgrade, so I stopped backing up all the time (it was tedious before I found this plugin). Then, they decide to go ahead without confirming first, and they don’t move the database files (as was promised). They corrupted and deleted the backups they should have made before the move.

Now I’m let to put the pieces back together, and they know nothing about how to solve my current problems (or so I assume, because they’re not responding to my help ticket).

My problems have been fixed by a very kind friend at trendyblog. I’ll give the most detailed explanation I can, but he did all the work, and it was way over my head.

Basically, in the process of restoring the many versions of the database that my host and I had, comments were duplicated and missing. The database had become severely messed up and was beyond repair. The duplicates and missing comments were confusing WordPress, which in turn gave me the errors I linked above. I’ll be deleting those files from my server, so let me say what was in them. Two related messages:
Lost connection to MySQL server during query
and
MySQL server has gone away
I would also like to thank Glenn, who commented above, for suggesting the idea of dupilcates and missing comments. Thank you!
We decided to clear the comments tables and start over with just one backup file. Once the comments tables were emptied, the above errors disappeared. My backup files were a bit problematic; various ones were not workable. I don’t know why they weren’t any good, but I would advise anyone who’s making backups to test them on a testblog. Even though I thought I was following explicit instructions at the WP Codex, I still managed to mess things up.
My friend found the useable backup and then added in the few other comments that he had saved somehow. That’s where we stand at the moment.
Hopefully this information can help someone. In short, do frequent backups, make sure they’re viable, and don’t use my host (Infinityhost).
I’m so glad to have all of my work back. When I started this thread, I was in danger of losing everything. Thanks again everyone for your help and consideration.