Restoring hacked/deleted installation

[Erisiana]

Greetings,

I had multiple websites taken down last night by a hacker who literally deleted masses of files from my hosting server and replaced them with his own garbage. Among those deleted & replaced files were ALL the files for my two Serendipity blogs. (One was version 1.1.4, the other 1.1.5, and I had initially installed them both using Godaddy's install wizard)

I hope/believe that the actual databases for both blogs are intact & unharmed, so I figure I should be able to re-install Serendipity and just have it refer to the old databases, but I don't know how to do that. The Godaddy wizard doesn't seem to have an option for linking to a pre-existing database. And although I have been trying for almost an hour I've not been able to find instructions for doing so on this forum or in the support section of s9y.org. If anybody can help me accomplish this, or just link me to the forum post/support doc that will give me the necessary info I would most appreciate it.

TIA!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

When you still have your database, you should be fine if you upload the latest s9y version to your blog. To make it point to your current installation, pleas echeck if the file "serendipity_config_local.inc.php" is still on your server; this contains the DB access information, as long as the file properly exists, it would show your proper installation data...

HTH,
Garvin

[Erisiana]

Hi Gavin & thanks for your response! Alas I'm either not understanding you or I have not made my situation clear: the hacker deleted EVERYTHING that was in the installation directory. Including "serendipity_config_local.inc.php" and all other files.

I'd assumed that the MySQL database information was stored somewhere else on the Godaddy servers; if it was stored inside the s9y installation directory then what I have to work with is my last downloaded db backup, that's it.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Ah, okay. The mentioned file often has special privileges and so I thought it might have been preserved. In that case, you should manually restore it. It looks like this:

Code: Select all

<?php
	/*
	  Serendipity configuration file
	  Written on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:52:54 +0200
	*/

	$serendipity['versionInstalled']  = '1.6-alpha3';
	$serendipity['dbName']            = 'serendipity';
	$serendipity['dbPrefix']          = 'serendipity10_';
	$serendipity['dbHost']            = '127.0.0.1';
	$serendipity['dbUser']            = 'root';
	$serendipity['dbPass']            = 'root';
	$serendipity['dbType']            = 'mysql';
	$serendipity['dbPersistent']      = false;
	$serendipity['dbCharset']         = 'utf8';

So you would need to enter your matching credentials (databas eusername, password, etc.) in there. Also, if you can remember the s9y version you had installed, you should enter that there (so that when you upload a more recent s9y version to your server, the upgrader can recognize that and properly upgrade the table structure).

HTH,
Garvin

[Erisiana]

Thank you again Gavin! I'm sure that info will come in handy.

Fortunately my issue was resolved more easily than I thought it would be. I guess I just talked to the 'bad apple' in the bunch at Godaddy tech support when I first called. I later spoke with someone else who showed me how to restore the entire deleted directory from a server backup done before the attack. *whew*

He also confirmed for me that the MySQL databases ARE kept in a different location than the hosting plan space, so in the event that something like this happens the databases are still there to be restored.

I hope all this helps someone else someday! And thanks again Gavin.