Reinstall In-Portal

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

Hello,

when we execute core/install.php, we can choose : "Reinstall
In-Portal", and the text help on the right says :

"Reinstall In-Portal - cleans out your existing In-Portal database and
starts with a fresh installation. Note that this operation cannot be
undone and no backups are made! Use at your own risk."

1- why threaten user with such message :"cannot be undone and no
backups are made", is a dump isn't too complicated to achieve?

2- there's no confirmation message when we select this option : it
directly destroy all DB, without any confirmation, no security else
than this message, while we should help user, rather than letting him
going on a wrong action

I'd suggest here to have a warning prompt, and if user validate the
re-install, do a dump in backupdata/ folder before cleaning anything.

Phil.

[Alexander Obuhovich]

1- why threaten user with such message :"cannot be undone and no backups are made", is a dump isn't too complicated to achieve?

It's not threatening. It's just a warning, that admin will face such consequences after he uses this option.

Since we don't have "mysqldump", then our manual emulation of it is pretty slow and doing it before reinstall isn't too good.

I propose to tell about our dump feature on that confirmation step and add link to it, when user really wants it.

2- there's no confirmation message when we select this option : it directly destroy all DB, without any confirmation, no security else than this message, while we should help user, rather than letting him going on a wrong action

Yes, we can add one more step to reinstall process, that will ask admin confirmation to do it.

Also I think, that dumping and database restoring it's In-Portal business to do. Hosting should provide tools for proper database backup.

Have you seen backup/restore features in any other PHP cms?

--
Best Regards,

http://www.in-portal.com
http://www.alex-time.com

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

I agree as a first measure on a dump feature message, along with last
confirmation step before wiping out everything.

Wordpress don't have any backup feature, RBS Change doesn't have too
(may you don't know this one), but SPIP have a built-in backup system.

As PMA can do the job, and is also written in PHP, and as we have DB
credentials, why can't we do the same? (maybe a dumb question)

2010/12/13 Alexander Obuhovich <aik....@gmail.com>:

[Dmitry A.]

Hi guys,

Thanks for taking time and posting your notes Phil!

My vote is that we should:

1. Adjust the text a bit so it's less threatening :) 

2. Add JS Confirm dialog which will explain to user what will happen and that database will be cleaned out.

I see no point of asking for DB dump when we choose to do Clean Reinstall. The backup/restore functionality are already in place now. While I have nothing against additional check I believe it's not critical to add dummy checks on every single step including the DB backup before re-install, plus we never (I confirm never) had this issue before! :)

We should ask ourself, how many times that Clean Reinstall was ran VS. new Install, then how many time you needed to do the backup before that? :)

I believe the answer is NOT too often...

Cheers!

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

Hi Dmitry,

I agree for a prompt with a nice warning text.

I'll talk about my personnal experience, dated this morning :)

For some reason, root password have been changed by an admin, and I
wasn't able to login. I"ve searched which option in "Maintenance mode"
would let me reset the password, and I tried "reinstall", forgetting
that the next clic immediatly empty all DB (and make me angry at the
same time ^-^).

In another hand, an In-Portal self-backup, ran by an Agent would be a
must ! The archive file would contain DB backup + system/ backup
(without cache/ and /.restricted subfolders). Is it a dream?

p.

PS: I'd kindly suggest to finish
http://tracker.in-portal.org/view.php?id=657 :-)

2010/12/13 Dmitry A. <dand...@gmail.com>:

[Dmitry A.]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for sharing your experience - it's valuable!

Yes, we should get to the ROOT RESET task at some point - I see it quite useful too, thanks for refreshing on it.

As to the DB daily backups, we should discuss it in a separate place, but there yes we can consider this. However, it's not a priority as I see this. The problem with it - I wouldn't 100% rely on it since there might be cases when PHP or Cron or something else fails which is VERY unlikely when you run SYSTEM backups done on the Web-hosting level. In other words, yes, why not to have it, but it's not as effective as other type of backups which means I see no point of making high priority. Lets say - I have more use for ROOT RESET feature than this one :)

DA

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

All my reports here are my experience share :)

let's move backup think on another discussion, not the main task, but
could be another good feature for SMB (Small and Medium Businesses) to
afford a good backup without having knowledge/option/command line
access to DB.

2010/12/13 Dmitry A. <dand...@gmail.com>:

[Dmitry A.]

Phil,

If you don't mind would you please summarize once again what we have decided so far here (related to this particular issue). This way other users can quickly respond and we can finalize and create a task for this.

DA

[Phil -- wbtc.fr --]

yup

- add another step before performing "Reinstall inportal"

- this step could be a pop-up window to prompt user he is sure, and we
should put here a very explicit text "We will completly delete your
actual database in order to reinstall In-portal. If you want to keep
any data (text, menus, configuration, custom fields...), you need to
BACKUP first. To reinstall now and empty database, click YES,
otherwise click NO"

Maybe this text sounds stupid for you guys, but the more we'll be
close to average users, the best it'll be for our audience ;-) Don't
forget a CMS is a tool to create a website without any particular web
knowledge.

p

2010/12/13 Dmitry A. <dand...@gmail.com>: