Deleted Directory

Hi. I made a mistake a changed the directory for one of the domains we were hosting. When I tried to switch back to the old name all the files were deleted. Is Dreamhost able to retrieve the deleted files for me or is there anyway to find out if Dreamhost keeps any kind of back ups. Thanks.

Did you look in .snapshot? Described here in the wiki:

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Automated_domain_snapshots

First of all, you *may* very well be able to recover all your files yourself from the ".snapshot" directories Dreamhost maintains as automated backups.

For more information about how to get to them and recover your files, check out the Dreamhost Wiki article on Automated Snapshots. Good Luck!

--rlparker

Thanks guys. That sounds interesting but in the help files it says to CD the directory. What does that mean?

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Shell_Commands#Changing_directories

Or similar with your FTP program.

I got into the snapshot directory. In there the a folder that list hourly.0. However that's not far back enough. I need something that goes farther back. Were the files not backed up?

Mojo,

We don't have any way of knowing one way or another. How long had the directory been in existence (was it "old" enough to have "weekly" backups?) Did you just delete the directory, or did you remove the domain via the control panel? Any of these things (and probably a few others) *might* have a bearing on your snapshots.

Do you not have any local backups of the directory?

--rlparker

The site was created around October so there should be some older backups. I changed the directory via the control panel. The domain is still there but the directory for the domain was change by accident.

If all you did was change the directory for the domain in the control panel, the "old" directory the domain "was" using before the control panel change should have still been in your user area untouched.

If you accidentally *deleted* that directory, then you *will* need to find some "older" backups from before you made the change and the delete. *nix has no "undelete" safety net for dealing with such things; backups are your only recourse.

If there are no weekly.x directories in your .snapshot directory, I suggest you contact support and see if they can help. You may well be "out of luck". While Dreamhost does try to keep backups of your stuff, it is *your stuff*, and at the end of the day it is *your* responsibility to keep it backed up (as is very clear from reading the DH TOS).

As a last resort, you might be fortunate enough to be able to recover a lot of your stuff from Google's cache, or from the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine - but that is a pretty ugly proposition.

Good Luck!

--rlparker

Hi guys. Thanks for all the help. The problem turned out to be that because the domain was that in my change I had accidently set the domain to use a new user we had created. When it did that it was using the default directory we created for that user. I swithed the domain hosting to go back to it's original user set the domain directory back to what it was and all is good in the world. I checked the .snapshot of that directory and the backups were there as you all said. Thanks for the help.

Good Deal, I'm glad to see you got it sorted out!

--rlparker