Obviously they didn't work! Most of the database was fine except for one particular table named "posts," which not by coincidence contains all your posts and is naturally the biggest table in the entire database. Sometimes it breaks, crashes, etc, and normally it's a simple task of running a "repair table" command. Once I do that, the table is fixed in less than 5 seconds and everything is fine.
Once I was alerted to the problem on October 29th (thanks, Nigel!), I went ahead with the usual repair -- only this time it REALLY broke. I actually heard something rattle and snap, and a piiiing-zip! as a bolt flew off. Ooh, this was bad. I looked for the bolt but couldn't find it. Also, a serpentine belt had snapped, rendering the entire system useless. The only way to fix this was to bring in HostGator's tech support.
The problem was, HostGator had bigger problems to content with. They had an active "status update" post running to say that they were having MAJOR problems and many, many sites were down. This also meant they were deluged with tech support requests, and our forums problem would have to wait. I had no problem with their reasoning, and it was just a case of waiting patiently while they got around to it.
Today they responded with this:
As you can see, everything appears to be running normally now, and I believe we have more recent posts than October 25th, so I vote we leave things alone unless someone happens to come across something dodgy-looking. If there's a missing or corrupt post, then so be it. It's either that or we go back to the 25th.Thank you for contacting HostGator! I understand that you are still seeing issues with one of your databases and you have not been able to repair it. First of all, I would like to offer my sincerest of apologies for the issues that have happened to your server.
I found that when this issue first started the system started automatically attempting to repair your database but it's likely that this was interrupted as we discovered the extent of the issue. I needed to remove the previous temporary file so that I could run the repair again. I've repaired that database but there is a possibility that there was some data loss during this process. If you find any missing posts or post information on your site then please reply back to let us know.
We have a backup of your database from Sat Oct 25 15:02:13 CDT 2014 which we could use to restore it if needed. Just let us know if this is needed.
Thanks for your patience. Now you can resume!
By the way, I noticed that this is not the first time we've had Halloween attacks:
http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... =13&t=5095