Restoring when HB server won't start

[Steve Horn]

Somehow I trashed my HBDATA file while trying to create a new user device, properties and proterty values for a DirecTV HD DVR. Now the server won't start so I cannot restore from within it using the menu options. How do I copy and replace the HBDATA.MDB file in /config with the either the copy of same name I have in config/backup or the file named HBDATA.AUTOBACKUP in the same folder? The .autobackup copy has a later date stamp but is smaller than the others.
(Once I get restored here I'll try to determine how I got into this mess. What I did seemed logical at the time...)

[Richard Naninck]

Easy if you have MS Access.

I have a Dutch version so hopefully my menu translations are correct.

Open the .mdb file with MS Access and goto extra or options. Then goto database help programs and select something like 'compress and restore database'. After the mdb file is compressed and restored, restart the HB Server and you will be good to go with the latest damaged version.

[Steve Horn]

No that didn't fix it. In my effort to add a new device, properties and property values, somehow device & property records got added to the MDB that the server program does NOT like. Getting an 'Assertion Failed' dialog box with 'Trace Section 'task block' generated and assertion...' message. Best to revert to the prior version of the MDB. But which copy - I have one HBDATA.MDB and one named HBDATA.autobackup in the backup folder. Can I just copy the /backup version of the MDB from the backup folder to the /config folder? And what if anything to do with .autobackup?

[Richard Naninck]

I never used the backup option of the .mdb file so I wouldn't know. Can't you just delete the records using MS Access and see what happens?

[Steve Horn]

Probably can, but I thought it would be easier just to restore and start over... more carefully. Plan B is to go into the tables and try to identify the offending records. What puzzles me is what caused the problem in the first place, and how to avoid doing it again. (I Just upgraded a satellite receiver and am having to build new IR codes that the replaced receiver did not have and rather than try to 'fit' the new codes & functions into the old config I thought I'd just build a new DVR device, add properties, and property values.)

[Steve Horn]

A followup: I tried copying the two older versions of HBDATA in config/backup to /config. Neither worked - both yielded the same errors. Tried cleaning up the original trashed MDB file with MSACCESS, deleting the records that I thought might have been added today (a date field would have been nice). That didn't work either. Finally, I restored the entire Housebot directory to yesterday's image (stored on an external USB backup drive). That worked. So I'm where I was yesterday at 10 pm, just a day older. Now to start over... carefully.

[Richard Naninck]

Backups rule!

I ghost the whole Meedio/HouseBot directory anytime after changes are made. That has helped me a couple of times already.

[markd]

When I am making any sort of changes I do Backup Configurations all the time (like every 30 min), then add a letter to the zipfile name. Then when I (inevitably ) kill the database, I just open the last zipfile and copy the mdb over the corrupted version. If that doesn't work, I keep going back until I have one that does work. If some of the backups are corrupted, I delete them and start the process again. I also delete any backups from BEFORE the successful one, so that I keep the directory clean. I was up to "w", but I just restarted at "a".

Markd