All comments disappeared

[johnsore]

Hi,

Wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary but just noticed all my comments disappeared. Is there any way to figure out why or keep it from happening again?

The most recent comment shows up as #40 in Admin Suite/comments, does this mean the others are still saved somewhere?

Thanks,
john

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Can you check your database and see if the serendipity_comments table still has all the comments?

Did you maybe change your template, or edit any of the template files?

Regards,
Garvin

[johnsore]

Hi Garvin,

Haven't looked into the database before, I'll try but might take me a bit to figure out. I edited my post before you responded

"The most recent comment shows up as #40 in Admin Suite/comments, does this mean the others are still saved somewhere?"

I didn't change any templates.

Cheers,
John

[johnsore]

Hi Garvin,

Checked the database, appears that the old comments are gone. Must have been a glitch on my server or something.

john

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

So you mean that only one single comment, named ID #40 is shown in the backend?

Sadly this sounds as if someone or something deleted your comment(s). Which database are you using, can you ask your provider if he changed something? Which serendipity Version are you using? Do any people have admin access to your blog installation? Do you use other applications on your Domain?

Regards,
Garvin

[johnsore]

Yeah, unfortunately it just shows the most recent one. I'll have to check into it with my provider. I'm using Serendipity 1.0-beta1. No one else has access to the blog installation and not running any other apps.

I'll let you know if I find anything out.
Cheers,
John

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Okay, that would be good to know. You are the first to report comments suddenly disappearing, so I don't think it is a real bug or security issue. Maybe you could check your HTTP access logs for the last day and see if you see suspicious entries there? Or maybe your provider can shed some light, I hope.

HTH,
Garvin

[johnsore]

Hi Garvin,

It happened again but have restored it. Just like before I had the admin panel open, but not doing anything related to comments. My connection at home can be a little flakey at times so I don't know if that could have anything to do with it. I have never had a problem using my more stable work connection. I contacted my host last time and they had no explanation for it.

Cheers,
John

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Hm, that is a bugger. The serendipity code does not contain any statement do "delete all comments", so my guess is that somehow the comments table seems to get corrupted on your provider.

Maybe he can enable the "SQL query logging" facility on your server for some time. This saves all SQL statements sent to your database and might give some clues about what happens.

Serendipity only contains code to delete selected comments on the comment interface, but this always is related to a selection of comments. If no comments are selected, no delete statement is executed. And if comments are selected, they are queried as "DELETE FROM serendipity_comments WHERE id IN (3,4,5,6, ...)" - so it would always only delete the first page of comments, but not ever ysingle one of them...?!

I'm really confused about this, but currently I do not think that the problem lies with serendipity, but maybe more with table corruption on the database server...

Best regards,
Garvin

[johnsore]

Sounds good, yeah my feeling is its not Serendipity related either. I'll try your suggestion and let you know what I learn.

Cheers,
John