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Radio 911
A chronicle of my Radio Restoration Project can be found on Radio UserLand: The Missing Manual, beginning on January 2nd, 2005.
Update: Things started working again. I'm still not sure why. Hopefully the links below will help you in your time of need.
Things that are not working
Radio will not upload my files unless I exit and restart Radio.
Whether I choose Publish Home Page from the Radio menu or I touch a file in the www folder, it takes an exit/restart to cause Radio to upstream the file.
Radio will not restore my xml backup files, which makes it impossible for me to perform a clean reinstall.
Perhaps I am doing something wrong to get Radio to recognize my XML backups?. I followed the direction to Restore a backup but Radio fails to do anything when I would expect to see a countdown, letting me know the Restore status. Any advice?
When I choose Compact Data Files, Radio will hang on WeblogsComData.root.
If I delete that file, exit and restart Radio, then Radio will recreate that file. I choose choose Compact Data Files again, and it still hangs on this file.
Notes about my setup
Mac OS X 10.3.7
Radio UserLand 8.09b2
I upload my Radio site and most categories to my own ftp site. I do not use UserLand's public server.
Hunch about my situation
I believe there may be database corruption.
Interesting things of note
These things may have happened at one time but aren't necessarily happening to me right now. I'm going to leave them here for archival purposes.
The About Radio UserLand window often seems to end up stating, "Aggregator's cache updated."
I have a 2nd license of Radio UserLand running on my Apple Cube. It works just fine. It has 10 threads usually. On my problem version of Radio, there are usually 6, 7, or 8 threads. Why the discrepancy?
Radio keeps uploading the same files via ftp over and over again every time I start up the app. (This only seems to happen if I choose Publish home page or touch a file in the Radio www folder and it fails to respond so I restart Radio).
2004/12/index.html
2004/12/12.html, etc.
What's important to me to restore
My Weblog posts
My User table
My Workspace table
My Bookmarks menu
My Macros
My Tools
My FTP Settings
My www folder
My themes
Any preference settings I've configured
My weblogsData.root
Any other .root files I need
Here's some things I've tried
Removed all Tools.
Restarted Radio. Choose Publish Home Page. Nothing happens. Exit/Restart Radio and then the home page and rss file are upstreamed.
Reinstall Radio from scratch this time.
Hmmm.. Followed the directions in the Kickstart book. Copied over my Radio backups folder into the new backups folder that Radio created. Visited the Backup/Restore Prefs page, clicked Restore Now but nothing happens. Here is what is supposed to happen:
> Radio will begin the restoration process, refreshing the page every 15 seconds to display its progress. When complete, you should see a confirmation page saying that the restore completed successfully.
Tried this in FireFox and Radio threw an error:
Can't convert to a table because no destination address was specified.
Created a new folder in backups called weblogArchive.
Then ran the Restore again. Got this error page:
Backup/Restore
[Macro error: Could not find the translation string at 'backupAndRestore.backupNotFoundError'.]
Performed a backup. Worked. Tried to Restore. Got this error:
Can't convert a table because no destination address was specified.
Andy Fragen suggests...
Before re-installing Radio:
backup user table
backup workspace table
backup themes
export:
weblogsData.root
andy has a script that will copy all open databases and saves it
Matt Mower suggests...
If it were me I would probably not attempt to resuscitate Radio any
further, it sounds badly messed up. I would probably do the following:
1) zip up a copy of what you have now and put it somewhere safe
2) make a copy of the files Radio backup makes and keep them to hand somewhere
3) nuke the radio folder
4) download a fresh copy of Radio and install
5) put the backup files in the right place
6) restore
I've not used the Radio backup/restore so far but your situation
sounds desparate enough to indicate that you should probably
experiment with it.
Hope this may help a little.
Matt
Potentially Useful Links I've discovered as I research this mess
If you have a problem with Radio, here are a few tips you can use to solve the problem or gather data that can assist you in resolving it.
Radio Meta-Documentation (Awesome list of Radio lilnks)
I retrieved my usernum and password from the Mail me my password Prefs page. This is handy should you need to reinstall Radio from scratch.
Radio can keep a backup of your weblog posts, stories, templates and preference settings. Every night, Radio will back up new or changed data, and optionally upstream it to the public server. You can use the backup files to restore your data using a fresh installation of Radio.
I have the first item checked so that Radio will back up new or changed data every night.
I don't have the second item checked which will upstream your backup files to the public server. I believe that Radio will only retrieve a backup from the server if it exists on the UserLand server. I don't use that server. I use my own ftp server.
I'm not sure why this page is so hard to find in Radio. Seems to me there should be a link to this page from the Desktop home page, at least.
Here are some common errors you may come across when getting started with Radio UserLand.
Below is a checklist of data to gather about your Radio setup, computer and Internet connection if you are experiencing a problem upstreaming.
When you post your question to the Radio UserLand discussion group, mail list or to customer service by email, you can include these details to help troubleshoot the problem.
1. Were you ever able to upstream from this copy of Radio? Or is this a new installation that has never been able to upstream?
DW: I've been able to upstream in the past.
If upstreaming was working and it stopped, do you recall any recent software, network or hardware changes on the machine that might have coincided with upstreaming not working.
DW: Not sure.
2. What kind of Internet connection do you have? Also, what operating system (including version) do you have installed on your machine?
DW: DSL. Mac OS X 10.3.7
3. Do you have any Internet security software or hardware (firewall/proxy server) installed on your machine and/or network?
DW: Yes. I have the built in firewall installed on my laptop.
3. On the Events Log page, do you see any upstream error messages?
DW: No.
4. Are you upstreaming to the UserLand community server? Or are you using FTP to your own server?
DW: FTP.
If you are using FTP upstreaming, you can check a list of TCP/IP error messages that you might come across.
DW: I'm not seeing any of those messages.
5. Basic things to check in Radio. Is upstreaming enabled? Is Radio in work offline mode? How many threads do you see running in the About Radio UserLand window?
DW: Upstreaming is enabled. Radio is not in work offline mode. There are 7 threads.
6. Is there any change if you exit and restart Radio and/or your machine?
DW: If I choose Publish home page from the Radio menu, nothing happens. If I exit and restart Radio, the home page and rss.xml file will be uploaded.
Things I'd like to automate and deal with once I get Radio up and running again
Automated, regular compacting of data files
A decisive way to hanlde backup reports about verification failures
Radio Tips
Community Radio Wish List
My Community Radio Wish List Manifesto
I believe that all Radio Users should maintain a Radio Wish List outline, available in OPML format. That way, UserLand could add our wish lists together and see what us users really want, in our own words.
Here is my wish list outline address (OPML)
What's yours? Send it to me and I'll add it to this page underneath your own name. Let's build a community radio wish list together.
How to create and add your Radio wish list to the Community Radio Wish List
Start Radio and begin a new outline.
To begin a new outline in Radio, choose the menu command File, New. A window appears with a gray triangle next to a blinking cursor.
Enter your wish list, press Enter between each wish.
Save your wish list in your Radio UserLand:www:gems folder. Name it something like 'myRadioWishList.opml'.
Radio will notice that you've added a file to the gems folder and upstream it to your site.
Check your Events Log. You should see an event that confirms that your wish list was upstreamed to the web.
Click on the link and send me the URL via email 
.
. I'll add your wish list to the Community Radio Wish List.
Whenever you update your wish list, those changes will be immediately reflected in the Community list.
Brian Holland
Cristian Vidmar
Dann Sheridan
Donovan Watts
Sub categories
I want to create categories within categories in Radio UserLand. For instance, I started a Weekly Tips section on my site, Radio: The Missing Manual. I want people to be able to subscribe to this section's weblog posts so I created a new category in Radio called 'Weekly Tips". I then created an #upstream.xml file which ftps this category to a subfolder on the missing manual called 'tips'.
I copied the theme files over from the missing manual category so that it would match. This all works fine but since this new category is really just a subfolder of another category, wouldn't it be nice if Radio have simply created this new entry as a *sub-category*, saving me from having to copy over theme files and the required tweaking that inevitably needs to be done. Not to mention that I now must manage two very similar themes instead of being able to take advantage of Radio's inherant ability to look higher up in the table for a template.
Markdown support
I'd like to see Markdown support in Radio.
Thanks to Andy Fragen I've got Markdown support and hopefully you will too, soon.
robots.txt upstream support
Is it yet possible to upstream a robots.txt file automatically?
This thread says it has to be manually uploaded...
Comments and trackbacks on the same page as the post.
Performance
Radio is sluggish on my OS X Mac when I am editing outlines.
RSS editing
It should be easier to edit the RSS description for each category. For instance, the RSS feed for this category is "Donovan Watts: Radio: The Missing Manual." I don't want 'Donovan Watts:' to be in front of every category feed I create.
Outline font settings aren't remembered.
Open an outline. Choose Apple-2 to make the font bigger. Save the outline. Close the outline. Open the outline again. The font size has reverted to the earlier, smaller size.
Creative Commons integration
As with Frontier, it would be nice if CC licensing were incorporated into the Radio Prefs.
Hard Drive name change
When I change the name of my hard drive, I must jump through hoops to make Radio work with the new name. This should be easier.
Work with my preferred browser
So many people want to use FireFox or Mozilla or anything other than IE or Safari. Radio just won't do it. It should respect whatever browser I use.
p tags, go away!
Radio, please don't insert any code. Let me handle it. No more p tags for double returns. Thanks.
shortcuts and glossary items don't expand in rss feeds
See this page for the details.
slacker bug
Bruce Zimmer explains the slacker bug, which I know nothing about because I blog constantly!
I want to be able to alter post dates.
Nick Starr
Steve Kirks
Will Findlay
