How to recover DNN Site

1
votes

One of our client has a DNN Site. There was some issue happened in the server and the drive that host the site is crashed. Luckily the database was in other drive. So we have database of the site. I have a back up of the site in my local system too. Now I need to restore the site. So My question is what steps should I perform exactly?

Below are some twists that I came to know recently:

  • There were other sites too and they were in different DNN version. Can we know from database which version of DNN was the sites running?
  • I tried to put my files on server and provide connection string of database. When I start the site, it complete the installation process, but shows me default DNN Page. Please see attached image for the same.

enter image description here

  • When I checked the Log file, it is throwing below error

Unhandled error loading module. ---> System.Web.HttpException: The file '/Portals/_default/Containers/Xcillion/NoTitle.ascx' does not exist

DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.Exceptions - DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.ModuleLoadException: Unhandled error loading module. ---> System.Web.HttpException: The file '/Portals/_default/Containers/Gravity/Title_h2.ascx' does not exist.

DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.Exceptions - System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.Exceptions - DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.ModuleLoadException: Unhandled Error Adding Module to ContentPane ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

  • Then I thought the site may use the inbuilt database (I am not remembering exactly what kind of database I set up). So I copied the site code in separate folder and tried to map this folder with IIS. And that is giving me below error:

DotNetNuke.Common.Initialize - The connection to the database has failed, however, the application is already completely installed, a 500 error page will be shown to visitors"

Can anyone tell me how can I recover this site?

Thanks in Advance.

1
dotnetnukerestorednn9

1 Answers

0
votes

Ouch!

Having the database (or databases) is a good start.

Look in the Versions table and the last row is the last DNN Version installed. Look in the Portals table to see which portals were created in that install.

The errors that refer to Containers refer to files that are missing from the site's file system. Your IIS configuration for the site points to the root of the file system.

The module load exception probably refers to a module's files that should be in /DesktopFiles/ModuleName.

So, if you have the database AND you have a copy of the files that correspond to the database, then put them all back, make sure that the connection strings are pointed correctly in web.config ... and cross your fingers.

If you have the DNN version and the correct database, you might try doing a clean install of the DNN, install the modules that you had installed on the one that crashed, and THEN swap the clean version's database with the one that you have -- actually a copy.

Make sure that you are keeping copies, and you may be able to reconstruct lots of things.

And, it goes without saying that you should take a blood oath about making good and regular backups, and storing them on a different disk.