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ALL my task are gone! Please respond ASAP

jose.rojas says:
Hi, may be this isn't the best place to ask for help but i am in shock right now..

I am a pro user that sync every 15 minutes the agend of my blackberry curve 8310 with RTM, so as a big fan of GTD, all my life is resumed here.. well, today when i wake up at 8 am and got my blackberry to review my tasks.. surprise! ALL TASK ARE GONE!

What happend? And more important.. please recover my tasks! Are (or were) more than 200 tasks, the job from an entire year :'(
Posted at 3:05pm on December 29, 2008
arvid says:
jose.rojas, did you check the web interface whether everything is still there?

When you search for tasks, do you find them? Maybe they are in a different list.
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Hi arvid, all my task are gone.. i doble checked with firefox and opera.. :'(

In fact, i only have 1 task actually.. Please help me to recover my data..

Additionally, i have found several posts with same issue, this may be a bug in milksync ?
Posted 15 years ago
arvid says:
jose, I have asked a developer to look into this.
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Hi Arvid.. what about my data ?
Posted 15 years ago
arvid says:
Sorry, Jose at the moment I can't have a look at it as I don't have the system permissions to do so.

They will have a look as soon as possible.

Arvid
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Tahnks, i'll be online waiting..
Posted 15 years ago
mensurationist says:
Good luck, Jose. I hope that you get your tasks back.

For fear of exactly the same thing happening, I have implemented an automated backup of my iCalendar file to my (Unix) computer, using curl. Kudos to the RTM team for providing an easy and transparent pathway for us to perform this essential action.
Posted 15 years ago
u21e says:
As a general question: Does RTM provides for backup? Is there a way for me for complete backups on my computer?
Posted 15 years ago
arvid says:
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
mensurationist: How u can do that? I use linux, this info will be useful to me :)

arvid: The waiting is becoming too long :'(
Posted 15 years ago
mensurationist says:
Jose,

use cron to call a bash script like the following:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash -x

ICAL="/home/user/calendar/rtm.icalendar"

rm -fr $ICAL

curl -u jose.rojas:password \
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/icalendar/jose.rojas/ > $ICAL

exit 0

You may need to experiment a little to get it working on your system.
For example, I am sure that you have a better password than "password"! ;)

Good luck!
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
jose.rojas, can I ask if you've already submitted an issue report via our support system for this issue?

We really need you to do this so that we can get the full details of the issue from you and follow up via email. (As mentioned in the forum posting guidelines, we do need to receive the report as we're not able to provide support like this via the forum.)

Thanks!
Posted 15 years ago
mensurationist says:
One thing that I didn't mention about my backup solution is that I also have the local file backed up on a subversion server, so I can retrieve it in case of corruption. That is pretty important because otherwise you might unwittingly copy the corrupted version over your current version. This new script, below, performs some more fine-grained checks, and alerts the user if there seems to be a problem before copying the new version over the old version. Among other things, it counts the number of lines in the icalendar file, and alerts the user if it is less than half the length of the previous version, or more than double.

I use mutt as a mail client, and it is configured to colour any messages that correspond to rememberthemilk bright red.

#####################################################

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

# bash script to download the icalendar file from RTM, perform some simple
# checks, and if it seems ok, keep it.

LOCATION="/directory/for/calendar"
RTM_NAME="user_id"
PASSWORD="password"
EMAIL="your_email"

if [ -d "$LOCATION" ]
then cd $LOCATION
else echo "Can't change to directory $LOCATION"
exit 1
fi

curl -u $RTM_NAME:$PASSWORD -o rtm.icalendar.new \
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/icalendar/$RTM_NAME/

if [ -e rtm.icalendar.new ]
then new_lines=$(wc -l rtm.icalendar.new | awk '{print $1}')
else echo "Can't find new icalendar file"
exit 1
fi

if [ -e rtm.icalendar ]
then old_lines=$(wc -l rtm.icalendar | awk '{print $1}')
else echo "Can't find previous icalendar file"
exit 1
fi

if ((new_lines*2 < old_lines))
then echo | mail -s 'rememberthemilk archive corrupted: too small?' $EMAIL
elif ((new_lines > old_lines*2))
then echo | mail -s 'rememberthemilk archive corrupted: too large?' $EMAIL
else mv -f rtm.icalendar.new rtm.icalendar
fi

exit 0

#####################################################

Any comments, edits, suggestions are welcome. This script runs on

16:30:15 $ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.39(1)-release (i386-portbld-freebsd7.0)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

YMMV!

Cheers,

Andrew
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Emily: Yes i did same day that i've got the disaster.. December30..

Andrew: Amazing job man.. i will use your script for backup my tasks when the RTM developers restore my tasks..
Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi jose.rojas,

I've checked our system, but unfortunately I haven't been able to locate either of your reports. :(

Would it be possible to let me know the ticket numbers? The ticket number is the first part of the subject in the auto-response email that you should have received after submitting the report; it would be in the format: #1XXXXXXXXBB

I can check our system and find your reports.

Thanks!
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Emily: i have sent the issue report 2 times but i never have received any confirmation email..

The only i've got was this screen..

http://img57.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pantallazogq0.png

Please help me.. :'(
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Hi Emily,

This time i've got the autoresponse email..

The issue number is [#198282169BB]

I hope that this help to get my tasks back :'(
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Still waiting folks.. almost a week without my tasks..

Posted 15 years ago
emily (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi jose.rojas,

Thanks, I checked and we received your report over the weekend.

It's now in an engineer's queue to investigate and I'll let you know via email as soon as I have an update.

Just as a reminder to anyone syncing their tasks, we don't generally provide data restoral services (as noted before downloading MilkSync, you should ensure that you backup the tasks on your device before syncing).

Thanks!
Posted 15 years ago
jose.rojas says:
Thanks very much!

My task were restored! u rock! :D

Now i will backup my task everyday..
Posted 15 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.