Oxwall User Restore (owuserrestore)

If you accidentially deleted a user from your Oxwall (www.oxwall.com) install (or the user deleted his/her account and now wants it back), this script helps you recovering most user data. In fact, it merges your current database dump with an any older database dump where the user data still exists. This script is only a "best guess" and in no way supported by the Oxwall team, so proceed with caution!

Install

Prerequisites:

• Git
• Golang

If you haven't already, install Git and Golang on your system. On Ubuntu/Debian this would be:

sudo apt-get install git golang

Then set up Go:

• Create a directory for your $GOPATH, for example ~/gocode
• Set the $GOPATH environment variable accordingly: export GOPATH=~/gocode
• Add the bin directory to your $PATH, for example: export PATH=$PATH:~/gocode/bin

Now you can install owuserrestore using go get:

go get github.com/thomasheller/owuserrestore

Database setup

owuserrestore requires three distinct MySQL databases:

1. owuserrestoreold Old database containing the user data you'd like to restore
2. owuserrestorecurrent Current database missing the user's data
3. owuserrestoremerge Another copy of the current database

Use a local MySQL server to run owuserrestore. Never run it against a live system. Instead, put your Oxwall site in maintenance mode, pull a database dump from its server, and re-enable your site after you've verified that everything works fine.

If you don't have a local MySQL server running already, the following command will install mysql-server on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

You can import your database dumps into three distinct databases as follows:

Run MySQL shell using mysql -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD (where USERNAME and PASSWORD are whatever you chose during the MySQL install) and issue the following commands, replacing YOUROLDDUMPFILE.sql and YOURCURRENTDUMPFILE.sql with the filenames of your database dumps:

create database owuserrestoreold;
use owuserrestoreold;
source YOUROLDDUMPFILE.sql;
create database owuserrestorecurrent;
use owuserrestorecurrent;
source YOURCURRENTDUMPFILE.sql;
create database owuserrestoremerge;
use owuserrestoremerge;
source YOURCURRENTDUMPFILE.sql;
quit;

If anything goes wrong or you'd like to start over, remember dropping the database(s) using drop database DB; (where DB is owuserrestoreold, owuserrestorenew owuserrestoremerge) in MySQL shell first.

owuserrestore will copy the user's data from the first database (owuserrestoreold) which do not exist in the second database (owuserrestorecurrent) into the third database (owuserrestoremerge)

Important: All three databases must follow the same database schema -- however, owuserrestore will not verify that. You can check that manually, for instance in MySQL workbench (sudo apt-get install mysql-workbench) via Database > Compare Schemas (only available when viewing a model/ER diagram).

Merging the databases

If all three databases are in place, run owuserrestore as follows, replacing 12345 with the of the user you'd like to restore (also, replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with whatever you chose during MySQL install):

owuserrestore -userid 12345 -dbolduser USERNAME -dboldpass PASSWORD -dbcurrentuser USERNAME -dbcurrentpass PASSWORD -dbmergeuser USERNAME -dbmergepass PASSWORD 

owuserrestore will print some statistics regarding the differences between the databases. To actually do the merge, use the -real flag:

owuserrestore -real -userid 12345 -dbolduser USERNAME -dboldpass PASSWORD -dbcurrentuser USERNAME -dbcurrentpass PASSWORD -dbmergeuser USERNAME -dbmergepass PASSWORD 

Epilogue

Once owuserrestore is done, get a dump of the merged database, so you can replace your live database:

mysqldump -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD owuserrestoremerge > owuserrestoremerge.sql