Blogpocalypse

The short version of this story is that I messed up.

  • Oh woe is me for I didn't build an automated backup routine.

    During a routine update to the AWS shell which COSMIC ORBITERS lives on, the docker instance which holds the mongo database got interrupted. That's usually not a problem for it, and it restarts with a monitor that runs on it. It didn't start back up. When it tried, it just encountered .a ghost version of itself living in memory. It wasn't having any of being connected to, and with enough fussing around over it with the shell, I deleted the image. Poof, the mongo database is gone.

    So, usually when I put a database into commission, I'm doing it at the behest of someone who is paying me to do it. Naturally, I consider their data valuable and establish a backup system of some kind when they get something built. In this case no one was paying me to build it so I kind of forgot to put a back up in place. Oh, I remembered occasionally and thought to myself, "You should add a script to your site update routine which ships a copy of the latest dataset somewhere off site." I didn't act on that thought though.

    So now I see that all that work on formatting the tutorials here is gone and I didn't remember to back up all my SEO extras. My site is empty and all I have to show for it is this meta blog entry talking about database best practices when operating a Docker virtual server.