Alfresco has changed and there are missing items

I have just logged into the Repository on Alfresco and found a serious
problem.

I went English > Documentation > Impress Guide to upload a new draft version
and found that the draft folder was empty.

Where have all the draft documents gone? I have checked a couple of other
guides and they have the same problem.

Can someone fix this URGENTLY.

Another change also, which made me wonder what has happened, is that the
colour has changed from green to black.

Has anybody else fouond this problem?

Regards

Peter Schofield

Somewhere in the archives (last month or 2) is David Nelson's direct email address. He's the person to write to about Alfresco problems. (Hazel mentioned something similar yesterday.)

Sorry, I can't easily look anything up right now.

--Jean

Found David's address: commerce@traduction.biz

Hello Jean

I have sent an email to David outlining the problem.

I have a couple of chapters I can continue working on which includes the Impress chapter of the Getting Started guide.

Until the problem is fixed I do not want to attempt uploading new versions.

Regards

Peter

Hi guys,

Sorry, I have been really busy recently but, as Jean mentioned, direct
mail about problems like this is the fast way to get to me.

Alfresco has been upgraded to Alfresco 4. The upgrade is finished,
barring some tweaks to the site's theming. The principle reason for
doing the upgrade was that file uploads are much more robust in this
version of Alfresco, whether single-file uploads or multiple. Alfresco
is also running on its own server now (I already mentioned this
recently).

Now, theoretically, there should have been no data loss. "If any of
the repo is there, it should all be there", so to speak.

Please could you give more details about exactly what files appear to
have got lost? I will then check the problem out. Please could you
also tell me when they were uploaded?

You should be able to upload files with no problem now (much better
than before), and all work on the site is now finished (until I get
around to those theming tweaks in January).

In any case, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience...

Hello David

I am updating the Impress Guide and was using the draft versions of chapters that were placed in the Repository > English > Documentation > Impress Guide > Drafts. Yesterday, 29 Dec, all the documents were there and this was before the upgrade to Alfresco as I still had the old green colour scheme when I logged in.

This morning, 30 Dec, I logged in to Alfresco to upload a new draft version of Chapter 3 and was greeted by the new black colour scheme. I went to the drafts folder to upload this new version and found the drafts folder empty. It should have contained all the draft versions of the chapters for the Impress Guide with the exception of chapter 1 (published) and chapter 2 (being proofed). This drafts folder would have also indicated the locked chapters that I have already downloaded for updating which are chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6.

I have not tried uploading any files because the drafts folder is empty and may upset the version numbering of the chapters.

In my opinion, it seems to me the links to all the files have been broken when the upgrade was carried out.

Hope this helps solving the problem.

Regards

Peter Schofield

Hi Peter,

I am looking into this. I'll post back with news in 12 hours or so.
Again, sorry for this inconvenience...

Hi,

Hi Peter,

I am looking into this. I'll post back with news in 12 hours or so.
Again, sorry for this inconvenience...

--
David Nelson

OK, I've been surveying the repository, and the folders with which
there appears to be a problem are as follows:

> > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > Base Guide> Drafts
> > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Published
> Guía de primeros pasos> 0 Documentos originales
> Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

I don't expect to have more news for you before Monday, but this will
be checked out on Monday.

For the moment, if someone feels like it, they could re-upload any
missing content into a folder called "Drafts Restored" in each of the
said book folders, structured as before...

I'm *suspecting* that the affected folders may have been uploaded into
while the upgrade was being done... I've noticed that stuff
uploaded/updated before and after Dec 29/Dec 30 *seems* to be intact.
Am I correct about that?

During the last minor upgrade (3.2 to 3.4), there was no problem. It
is true that this is a more-major upgrade (3.4 to 4.0), but I'm not
currently aware of any radical changes in Alfresco that would make an
Alfresco upgrade hazardous.

Any further information from anyone? Otherwise, there will be more
news on Monday...

Happy New Year to those of you that celebrate it.

OK, I've been surveying the repository, and the folders with which

there appears to be a problem are as follows:

> > > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > > Base Guide> Drafts
> > > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Published
> > Guía de primeros pasos> 0 Documentos originales
> > Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

[snip]

I'm *suspecting* that the affected folders may have been uploaded into
while the upgrade was being done... I've noticed that stuff
uploaded/updated before and after Dec 29/Dec 30 *seems* to be intact.
Am I correct about that?

I'm fairly sure you are wrong about that. AFAIK, nothing new or changed was done to several of those folders, but I won't be able to check them until tomorrow. And, of course, I could be unaware of things others have done in addition to Hazel and Peter.

During the last minor upgrade (3.2 to 3.4), there was no problem. It
is true that this is a more-major upgrade (3.4 to 4.0), but I'm not
currently aware of any radical changes in Alfresco that would make an
Alfresco upgrade hazardous.

Apparently I missed the note in which we were advised in advance of the timing of this upgrade, so we could avoid up- or downloading files during the work.

--Jean

Hi Jean,

OK, I've been surveying the repository, and the folders with which

there appears to be a problem are as follows:

> > > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > > Base Guide> Drafts
> > > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Published
> > Guía de primeros pasos> 0 Documentos originales
> > Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

[snip]

I'm *suspecting* that the affected folders may have been uploaded into
while the upgrade was being done... I've noticed that stuff
uploaded/updated before and after Dec 29/Dec 30 *seems* to be intact.
Am I correct about that?

I'm fairly sure you are wrong about that. AFAIK, nothing new or changed was done to several of those folders, but I won't be able to check them until tomorrow. And, of course, I could be unaware of things others have done in addition to Hazel and Peter.

Well, I've found instances of activity recorded after Dec 29 that are
intact within the repo. And I've just tried a download/edit/upload new
version, which worked OK. So I think that any work done on the repo
from now on will be alright.

In any case, Monday I'll be checking things out more thoroughly. There
is a backup of the repo that was taken before the upgrade, and there
is a previous backup taken Dec 25.

Apparently I missed the note in which we were advised in advance of the timing of this upgrade, so we could avoid up- or downloading files during the work.

Mea culpa. I've been frantically busy workwise recently, and found an
unplanned timeslot for the upgrade at a time when I figured that
Europe/Asia-Pacific would be largely asleep or early in the morning,
and went ahead. I was keen to bring the new 4.0.c improvements to the
LibO repo because the file uploading is much more robust (I've been
extensively testing it in my own work).

After investigating the problem, I'll be working on restoring any lost content.

Please feel free to send me all your files that can be uploaded: if I
can rebuild the problematic folders then I think it's maybe better to
do that than to simply rollback to an earlier backup. What do you guys
think about that?

Please feel free to send me all your files that can be uploaded: if I
can rebuild the problematic folders then I think it's maybe better to
do that than to simply rollback to an earlier backup. What do you guys
think about that?

--
David Nelson

Depends on the number of files that need to be restored. I'll check tomorrow when I get home and let you know what I think one way or the other.

--Jean

I just now got an internet connection and checked. There were *many*
older (i.e., not new or recently changed) files in most of the Drafts
folders, almost all of which are now empty. I'm not sure, but I think
some of the empty Proofing folders may have had items in them as well.

IMO rolling back to a recent backup will be a lot less hassle and a
lot less likely to result in uploading the wrong files from what we
have on our home machines -- or copying ones from the Published v3.3
folders into the Drafts folders, which is the way we populated the
Drafts folders in the first place... before we've done further work.
After restoring from the backup, then we can re-upload those few files
that are newer.

--Jean

Hi Jean,

IMO rolling back to a recent backup will be a lot less hassle and a
lot less likely to result in uploading the wrong files from what we
have on our home machines -- or copying ones from the Published v3.3
folders into the Drafts folders, which is the way we populated the
Drafts folders in the first place... before we've done further work.
After restoring from the backup, then we can re-upload those few files
that are newer.

OK, I'll give this preference. More news in 24 hrs or so.

Hi,

I have been working on Alfresco and here are the results:

1) I tried restoring the backup taken just before the upgrade, but
this did not yield the desired results. So I restored the repo to what
it was before my troubleshooting attempts.

2) I created new folders for the following:

> > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > Base Guide> Drafts
> > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Published
> Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

In the new Draft folders, I restored the "Figures & Screenshots"
folders and the contents I found therein.

So basically it means we have a fully working repo again (no more
folders with red bar and no content, that couldn't be uploaded into).

But, whatever content that was in the folders below (same list as
above), would need to be restored from your local copies, the wiki,
etc.:

> > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > Base Guide> Drafts
> > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > Writer Guide> Published
> Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

Alfresco is feeling very well now, is fully functional and resplendent
in its new version (the more-robust uploading was the main
improvement). I don't think we'd need to think about an upgrade for at
least a year to come (and maybe why even then?) as all previous little
issues that existed have now been cleared up.

The only other alternative would be to restore a disk image backup of
the server taken before Christmas and before the upgrade. But we'd
lose the upgrade (and that new uploading improvement, which was a
needed fix).

My 2 cents would be to re-upload material and go forward with what we
have. But what do you you guys think?

Hi,

Thinking on a bit about what can be done for the future:

Alfresco was being backed-up every 3 hrs to a different server,
belonging to TDF. This got disrupted when I moved Alfresco away from
the former server and onto its own VPS. But it was a necessary step.
To enable any TDF-approved administrator to be able to work
unrestrictedly on the server OS, and to reduce the probability of
outages, Alfresco needed to be on its own dedicated server.

The 3-hourly backups will be resumed during January. ATM, a full disk
backup gets taken once a week.

Hardware-wise, the server has a dual RAID disk system, so there's at
least a little reassurance there, too. We're running on an up-to-date
Linux, so that's a healthy thing, too.

It would be good to have another couple of experienced sysadmins
onboard with us, together with more Alfresco expertise. We recently
had a mail from an Afresco-knowledgeable person from the Apache OOo
project, and I will be following up with him in the hope that he'll
become a regular participant in the LibO docs team, too. Plus it would
be excellent bridge-building between the 2 projects. The fact that
alfresco.libreoffice.org and media.libreoffice.org are on their own
VPS will certainly make it likely that more TDF admins will chip in
with help in the future.

Apart from the development of a really nice public front end at
media.libreoffice.org, which would be a possible next project (no
effect on Alfresco: media.libreoffice.org is a Drupal site that
communicates with the Alfresco platform only), there's not too much
work to do on the Alfresco platform.

Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I don't think it's worth
developing integrated workflows on Alfresco, because the current usage
of it seems to meet all the team's real needs.

One might advantageously replace the current media.libreoffice.org
with an Alfresco Share site instead.

Aside from that, there's only a few minor tweaks to do on the
alfresco.libreoffice.org site's presentation.

So we probably wouldn't need to envision any more traumatic events on
Alfresco in the foreseeable future... (apart from whatever 2012 dishes
out) :wink:

Just as food for thought.

Hi,

I have been working on Alfresco and here are the results:

1) I tried restoring the backup taken just before the upgrade, but
this did not yield the desired results. So I restored the repo to what
it was before my troubleshooting attempts.

2) I created new folders for the following:

> > > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > > Base Guide> Drafts
> > > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Published
> > Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

In the new Draft folders, I restored the "Figures & Screenshots"
folders and the contents I found therein.

So basically it means we have a fully working repo again (no more
folders with red bar and no content, that couldn't be uploaded into).

But, whatever content that was in the folders below (same list as
above), would need to be restored from your local copies, the wiki,
etc.:

> > > Impress Guide> Drafts
> > > Impress Guide> Proofing
> > > Base Guide> Drafts
> > > Calc Guide> Drafts
> > > Getting Started Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Drafts
> > > Writer Guide> Published
> > Guía de primeros pasos>1 Pendientes de traducir

Alfresco is feeling very well now, is fully functional and resplendent
in its new version (the more-robust uploading was the main
improvement). I don't think we'd need to think about an upgrade for at
least a year to come (and maybe why even then?) as all previous little
issues that existed have now been cleared up.

The only other alternative would be to restore a disk image backup of
the server taken before Christmas and before the upgrade. But we'd
lose the upgrade (and that new uploading improvement, which was a
needed fix).

My 2 cents would be to re-upload material and go forward with what we
have. But what do you you guys think?

Despite the nuisance of re-uploading, that does seem to be the best
way to proceed at this time. Having the needed fixes installed and
working is a valuable improvement.

I can start restoring the Drafts that have not been worked on yet.
Peter, Dan and others, if you could ensure that any files you're
working on are on the website and (where relevant) checked out, that
would help. Please check to see if I've already restored a file before
duplicating.

David, do you or the Alfresco guys have any idea why some of the
folders went wrong and others didn't?

Unless someone convinces me otherwise, I don't think it's worth
developing integrated workflows on Alfresco, because the current usage
of it seems to meet all the team's real needs.

I'm happy to not develop the integrated workflows. If our needs were
different, and the team larger, I'd probably have a different opinion.
But, as you say, the current usage seems to meet our real needs at
this time.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
I thought David said the ones that had gone wonky were where people had tried uploading within a certain time-frame. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Jean,

David, do you or the Alfresco guys have any idea why some of the
folders went wrong and others didn't?

I'll try and track down possible reasons with the Alfresco guys. The
only comfort we have at the present time is that, in my experience,
Alfresco is pretty stable when left in peace (at OS level, I mean)...

Hello Jean

The chapters I am working on have been uploaded and then I downloaded them
again so that they are locked for offline editing by yours truly. They are
as follows:

Getting Started Ch 06 Impress
Impress Ch 03
Impress Ch 04
Impress Ch 05
Impress Ch 06

The GS Ch 06 and Impress Ch 03 are new draft versions and ready for review.
When everything is OK on Alfresco (please let me know) I shall upload them
again so you can carry out a review.

Regards

Peter

Hi PeeWee,

When everything is OK on Alfresco (please let me know) I shall upload them
again so you can carry out a review.

Alfresco is live and operational again.