Backing Up WebTrends

Without using the UI

[mattglet]

I'm using old-school 7.1a, and I recently had a hardware failure which caused me to mess up the OS, and inadvertantly, WT. Is there a way to backup all my data so I can wipe out my current installation and start over? I'd rather not have to re-do all my settings and reprocess all my profiles.

I know there's a lot of storage directories, but can I just drag/drop files into a new installation and expect it to work?

[cgrantski]

You will have to re-analyze your data, but you can salvage almost all the configurations and skip the rebuilding.

There's a folder called /datfiles that contains other folders full of configurations. Most of them can be re-used. The .ini files can all be dropped in. The .wdb files contain titles and must be rebuilt, but as you probably know WebTrends does that by pinging the live site during the first analysis.

But --- The .wlp files are the profiles and need to be handled differently because of the GUIDs (name of the file, plus two places inside the file). They can't be just dropped in --- new GUIDs have to be created by the new install of the program. You can however salvage all the profile settings in those files by applying fresh GUIDs created by your new install.

You can get WT to create new GUIDs by making new profiles, as many as you used to have. Once they have been created, you'll have the GUIDs you need. You can then apply the GUIDs to the old files. As I said, you'll have to change the file name and two lines inside the file (you'll see them).

I want to make this clear --- you're having the new install of WebTrends create a bunch of new GUID codes. And you're applying the new GUIDs where the old ones used to be - 3 places per .wlp profile config file. The old GUIDs must not come in contact with the new install!

After you've got your .wlp files equipped with new GUIDs, there's one last step. Open the WebTrends GUI and you'll see all the profiles but their names will be whatever you used when you created these new ones. Do this: open each profile for editing, change one character in the name (add a space, whatever) then save it. This forces WebTrends to read the files and your new titles will appear.

There are a few things that you'll have to rebuilt. One is the Data Sources (locations of the logs). Another is the User list. I think that's it. Oh, any Scheduling preferences (analyze once a day, analyze at 2 a.m., whatever). I think that's it but you might run into others.

I've done this more times than I like to think about and it saves a lot of time. Go slowly, be alert (to anything I might have overlooked), and good luck.

The above procedure for .wlp files is definitely not supported by WebTrends tech support.

[mattglet]

Sorry for the delay in response, it took a while to actually start this.

I'm getting this error now:

Write error during extraction of ex06110414.log, a member of archive E:\Processing\ex06110414.zip, to E:\Program Files\WebTrends\modules\analysis\engine\7.1a\wtm_wtx\datfiles\databases\X3oGOTNUp06\.logtmp\ex06110414_zip-ex06110414_log

Anything look weird?

[cgrantski]

Looks like WebTrends failed to unzip a file (extract). That happens all too often, but shouldn't have anything to do with your other situation since WT is apparently finding the data source okay.

[mattglet]

It's happening every time, and I can't get by it (analysis fails). Is there a solution?

[mattglet]

Ok, the problem is that there are some corrupt zip files. Is there a way to get WebTrends to skip a file if it encounters an error?

[McElvoy]

I think so but am not sure. I try to never have one program unzip or ftp other files, too much room for failure. I would start searching in the Scheduler area of the admin since that's the entity that deals with starting and stopping analysis.