Ekopedia:Major database issue on French SQL database

• UPDATE: we got good help and are currently working hard in order to repair this. Thanks to everyone for your help!
• UPDATE 2: issue solved! Solution is here: Ekopedia:Fix:Major database issue on French SQL database --jluc 20 avril 2009 à 20:15 (EDT)

Québec, January 28, 2009

The Ekopedia Project needs your help!

We have a critical issue on the french database (http://fr.ekopedia.org) and despite the fact that this problem does not disturb the normal operation of the service, this issue is major as it lead to an unstable database and backups. In other words, we could lose all the knowledge (about 10 000 pages) set up since 6 years.

Why you should help

Every day, this is more than 10 000 people that get, with Ekopedia, solutions to build a better world. Without Ekopedia, every year, millions of people have no access to that knowledge and solutions.

How to help

• You have the skills, contact me: jean.luc.henry@fondationekopedia.org.
• You do not know how to solve the problem, you can make this message spread into your network!

To understand the problem

History

Ekopedia.org Project was created in 2002 and run Mediawiki application since 2004. Ekopedia.org consist of 8 websites (1 for each language + 1 common website for images).

Symptoms

• If you make an edit and add a character like "φ", during the save, there is a conversion that silently (corrupt) turn it into literal question marks (?).
• It's possible to detect the issue when trying to add some Mediawiki extensions (like TeX). Error message: "Illegal mix of collations".

The cause

Probably during a Mediawiki upgrade, the sysadmin (me) made a really really bad choice ($wgDBmysql5 = true;).

Who can solve the problem

• Mediawiki developer.
• MySQL Database Administrator.
• Anyone that clearly understand this: http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/01/turning_mysql_data_in_latin1_t.html

How to fix it

• I can give full SQL and files backup.
• send a mail to jean.luc.henry@fondationekopedia.org :)

Thanks, --jluc 28 janvier 2009 à 13:55 (EST)