As Beadiste put it, cloning a server w/ a gazillion files is a daunting task.
That seems to be an understatement. It took over a week to gain control of the server to where David could recover everything, a process that continues. It will soon be complete.

We have over 700 files in the cgi directory alone. Not all the files would transfer without having to change permissions. The cloning and transfer software will automatically change other files in that directory , disabling some features that we have grown accustomed to using on the board. All those file permissions have to be manually changed as David locates them. One of the features affected is "mail author'; basically the email system of the board, also relating to registration.

The good news: all data has been recovered, with 3 continuous days of download, and 3 continuous days of uploading onto the new server. The biggest issue at hand right now is the uploads of user images. There are over 33,000 images on the board. Of those, over 10% have duplicate file names. The server is case sensitive on file names and the software will automatically change the case of a duplicate file name, thereby assigning a separate file name. The transfer software is not case sensitive, and the result of that is that it will read 4 separate files that are the same names but a different mix of "fonts" and will only read them as one. So the duplicate images have to be downloaded manually into separate directories. David is now about halfway through the 33,000 images.

From now on, we ask that you please try to use unique names for your uploads. With over 1500 users, and names like "mille", milli, tab, islamic, roman, etc......are not unique file names. These are common examples. A simple way to make your file names unique so they won't "'overlap" with other files of the same name would be to incorporate the date. For example, "72415milli2"

Also, please change the name that your camera automatically assigns to image files. Many cameras assign the same file name, and this makes for multiple images with the same name as well. This creates the single largest overlap issue for file names, requiring that the transfer all be done manually.

Once images are sorted out, David will go through the cgi directory and locate all the modified permissions.

Thank you very much for hanging in with us - we still have jobs and lives to maintain as well as the site, but David is moving right along with our recovery. Jeez, it's good to be back. While we were down I joined Facebook just to try to give an update on BCN. It's not holding my interest, but I (sort of) think it helped me to reach a few of you who are playing there.