Help - I really messed up my cyberduck!

[Bobbie]

Hi all,

Through a series of mistakes, while changing the layout of my website,
I accidentally deleted a bunch of folders, bringing down my website
AND my email! I got my site back up' I remembered that the site
files were in a folder called public_html, so I created one, put the
files in there, and voila, my site is back up - unfortunately it took
me two days to figure this out!

I also believe I remember a folder called public_ftp, so I created one
of them too.

In any case, I'm hoping that creating any other missing folders will
also bring my email back. Here are the folders that are currently in
my cyberduck:

access-logs
etc
logs
public_ftp
public_html
tmp
www

If someone could be so kind as to tell me which folder(s) I am missing
and need to create, that would be great - or, set me straight if I'm
on the wrong track with getting my email back.

Thanks so much!!

Bobbie

[Ilyse Kazar]

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Bobbie <mailto:bobbietow...@gmail.com>
> June 19, 2011 8:57 AM

Hi Bobbie --

There would be a folder called "mail" in addition to the ones you list,
and the "mail" folder would have a rather complex structure if files and
subdirectories containing more files within it.

If you had backed up your entire home directory including invisible
files, just recreate "mail" and upload. If you haven't, but you
synchronize your mail to your local computer (some email clients call
this something like "enable offline mode") you can recreate your mail
accounts, connect to them in your email client, and import the mail
folders that had stored the synchronized mail.

PLEASE NOTE: On my server, the public_html folder belongs my account as
owner with the group being set as "99" which I believe is the "nobody"
account, with permissions set at 755. If the access to your public_html
folder you created is not set up like this, your site (and, thus,
server) may be at risk.

Chances are your best bet would be to contact your hosting provider and
ask them to restore a backup so that everything is done properly. You
might lose whatever mail you've received since the last backup (if you
haven't backed it up yourself to your hard drive) but this is a better
option than messing around with trying to recreate your home directory
on your own unless you really understand server security, accounts,
permissions, etc. (I do not claim to, in your situation I'd restore a
server backup ... I make one once a week via cPanel)

good luck!!

kazar

[Bobbie]

Wow - this is great! You gave me so much helpful information.

Once this nightmare is over, I plan on backing up my files each week
on cPanel.

I still haven't heard from my hosting provider, but fear that their
backup may have been done before I spent hours changing the layout of
my website! :(

Until then, could you tell me where on cpanel I might be able to set
the group to 99 and the permissions to 755? Or is that something
that I need to ask my server to do? I think that would be quicker
than asking them to restore their backup and perhaps then losing all
my work.

Also, could you tell me where I might look on cPanel to see if the
files were synchronized? I looked for synchronize and offline mode,
but don't see either.

Thanks so much

Bobbie

On Jun 19, 10:08 am, Ilyse Kazar <kazar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >    Bobbie <mailto:bobbietownsendmu...@gmail.com>

[Ilyse Kazar]

---

Bobbie June 19, 2011 12:03 PM

Wow - this is great! You gave me so much helpful information.

Once this nightmare is over, I plan on backing up my files each week
on cPanel.

I still haven't heard from my hosting provider, but fear that their
backup may have been done before I spent hours changing the layout of
my website! :(

You had said you uploaded your redone layout to the public_html folder ... you'll just do that again after they restore your account.

Until then, could you tell me where on cpanel I might be able to set
the group to 99 and the permissions to 755? Or is that something
that I need to ask my server to do? I think that would be quicker
than asking them to restore their backup and perhaps then losing all
my work.

Except that you want your mail back and, presuming you were accessing it via IMAP rather than POP, unless you were synchronizing your mail to your local hard drive the mail is GONE unless they do a restore.

Re setting permissions, this is something rather high-end and should not be messed with except by folks pretty familiar with doing this sort of thing. It needs to be done by the "root" user of the cPanel server via SSH, it's not something you can do in Cyberduck while logged in as the web account user. This is another reason that, IMO, it would be better to ask the ISP to restore your account, so that *everything* is in the proper place and has ownership and permissions set properly.

Also, could you tell me where I might look on cPanel to see if the
files were synchronized? I looked for synchronize and offline mode,
but don't see either.

Synchronizing IMAP mail folders to your local computer is done in your email client, not on cPanel. It all depends how you set up your email client to retrieve your mail. Come to think of it, if you've been downloading via POP as well as if you've been synching IMAP mail, you will be able to restore mails received and sent since your ISP's last backup.

If they back up.

My own WHM/cPanel server (a VPS) is "self-managed", i.e., the ISP is not responsible to do any backing up. It depends what kind of account you have with your provider.

again, GOOD LUCK! and save every file you have in your possession from the re-done web layout.

kazar