AtlasGames updated their Discourse forum to PostgreSQL 12 using the “manual update” method due to limited disk space. Although the update appeared successful, the site was reset to default, losing all posts, users, and settings. After checking, AtlasGames found that their database size had shrunk from 7GB to 83MB, indicating that it had been overwritten during the update. AtlasGames restored their backups, accepting the loss of a few days’ worth of posts. IAmGav advised against running ./launcher cleanup until the site is fully functional and emphasized the importance of backing up before making significant changes.
I wrecked my Discourse install at forum.atlas-games.com. I had to update to PostgreSQL 12 but only had 11GB free for my 7GB database and kept throwing errors, so I used used the “manual update” method here: PostgreSQL 12 update
All seemed to work well (no errors), but now my site is reset to default and wants to me to re-register and set it up from scratch … no posts, no users, no settings. I know I have backups … we pay the $2/mo for Digital Ocean to take weekly backups (looks like they’re 3 days old, though), and the forum’s own internal backups seem to be accessible (4 days old), but I’m hoping I didn’t actually lose my data and there’s a way to reassociate it. I ran “./launcher cleanup” though.
I checked my database size via terminal command: du -h /var/discourse/shared/standalone/postgres_data
My database was down to 83MB from 7GB previously. So it seems to have really been overwritten by the update. I ran ./launcher cleanup as part of the PostgreSQL update (as per the update directions), so there’s nothing to go back to except my backups. Discord wasn’t just disconnected from the database somehow.
I restored my backups, I can live with losing a couple of days of posts (my own fault for not backing up before updating). I just wish I knew why the PostgreSQL update overwrote my database, since I’m going to have try do it again eventually.
