Discussion of the download / upload tools

[halvar]

This version fixes a serious issue for some users with different forum display preferences. These issues made it impossible to get a thread list of a forum.

Download the whole zip (66MB):
https://1fichier.com/?ek4h1ii76z9gvtb312yr
installation instructions can be found here.
Download only the jar if you have a working installation (8 MB):
https://1fichier.com/?8iu54ca44ixnnhe89dak
just replace your forum-backup-0.0.x.jar with the new one.

[halvar]

I would like to know if anybody still uses this and for what.

The reason I ask is that I am a bit unhappy with it, and I am thinking of discontinuing it. I use it myself and for me and my use cases it works fine. But recently I noticed some bugs that did not affect me but might affect others. The main reason why I am unhappy with it is that I do not have the time to test it thoroughly enough or improve it to make it really useful for other people. As usual 'not having time' is a euphemism for 'no motivation'.

I would like to switch to another database (mariadb). This would make easy installation impossible, so it would have to support two database systems. Possible, but it would make testing more necessary and time consuming.

Maybe your use cases can be integrated in imgding? I would rather spend the time improving imgding.

Please post a reply or send me a PM if you have any comment.

[deezer]

Unfortunately I can't contribute much to your question, because I only tested it once or twice at the beginning, because I don't download very many pictures.
For my purposes I use imgding and still regularly imagerescue (e.g. to create thread lists). Both work, for my limited requirements, excellent.

So I cannot contribute anything to this question, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your excellent programs.

[halvar]

Fixes

• imagegenue: remove prefix from filenames
• set locale en_US for parsing dates (change in forum-backup.bat). When upgrading please replace your forum-backup.bat.
• avoid unnecessary downloads on very first download after fresh installation
• encrypt password. Password were stored unencrypted in a local file. Unencrypted passwords will now be encrypted. (*)
• Settings Page: "Check Configuration" and "Save" now redirect to the Settings Page again

(*) regarding encryping of the password

• unencrypted passwords will be encrypted on the first start
• the password is encrypted using a hardoded key. So anybody with physical access to your device will be able to decrypt it with some additional effort, as the key can be extracted from the source. The key to encrypt the password includes your login name on the local machine. If you change your local login name or login using a different name, the password cannot be decrypted. You can change the password using the settings page.
• while this encryption does not provide perfect security, it improves the situation considerably. At least the password is not in plain sight anymore.
• if you are on a mobile device with higher risk of theft, it is highly recommended to encrypt your hard disks on operating system or bios level. You should do this anyway.

Get the new version here:
https://1fichier.com/?p5izqj8leqw5m3c3jqjt

You have to download the whole zip even when upgrading, because two files have changed:
forum-backup.bat and forum-backup-0.0.18.jar

Upgrading
Replace forum-backup.bat and forum-backup-0.0.x.jar with the new versions
Fresh install
see http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/showpost.php?p=4311219

Side note:
This is another classic case of "It works on my machine". I develop on a Linux machine with en_us locale. Testing on another machine with German locale revealed that the parsing of the new date format failed (May vs. Mai). My initial tests in April when the new date format was introduced worked because April is the same in English as in German.

[effCup]

Originally Posted by halvar

I would like to know if anybody still uses this and for what.

The reason I ask is that I am a bit unhappy with it, and I am thinking of discontinuing it. I use it myself and for me and my use cases it works fine. But recently I noticed some bugs that did not affect me but might affect others. The main reason why I am unhappy with it is that I do not have the time to test it thoroughly enough or improve it to make it really useful for other people. As usual 'not having time' is a euphemism for 'no motivation'.

I would like to switch to another database (mariadb). This would make easy installation impossible, so it would have to support two database systems. Possible, but it would make testing more necessary and time consuming.

Maybe your use cases can be integrated in imgding? I would rather spend the time improving imgding.

Please post a reply or send me a PM if you have any comment.

I haven't used forum backup for quite a few months. I think it's a great program but in terms of obtaining images from vef I use imgding, which is much more useful for me/more suited to my general purposes. I think it would be useful to have forum backup available to use should that prove necessary once again in the future, but in general I'd say do what you want with your time/resources. I don't know why you want to use mariadb but you'll have good reason(s). Trying to support two dbs would be a nightmare. As Yogi Berra possibly said: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there aren't many instances where both paths lead to the same destination regardless.

[halvar]

Originally Posted by effCup

I don't know why you want to use mariadb but you'll have good reason(s). Trying to support two dbs would be a nightmare. As Yogi Berra possibly said: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there aren't many instances where both paths lead to the same destination regardless.

Actually after some consideration its not a big deal. I made a branch for my breaking changes and the fixes today could me merged without any conflict.

[ichbinein6]

Can somebody please repost the latest version of forum-backup (or, at least, the jar for upgrading - I'm using 0.0.14 now)? The links are broken.

[deezer]

That should be 0.0.18
https://1fichier.com/?ofvn7lxgnjdajb5kgeo1

[ichbinein6]

Thanks, deezer.