A little background

Since registering my JumpBox, I've enabled SSH to make some very minor tweaks to my wiki.

In particular, I've added some custom Javascript and CSS to get folding boxes on certain pages, and I've added two simple extensions: the cite extension and ParserFunctions, to give me a little added syntax and control over my markup.

I added these extensions via SSH by downloading the PHP files to my mac's desktop, then using Vi on the JumpBox and simply copying and pasting the contents of the files using the clipboard. No FTP or anything fancy. I then edited the main file (localsettings.php??) to include the extensions.

The issue

This morning my JumpBox was fine, but this afternoon the wiki was complaining of all sorts of technical errors, or just printing out reams of text. The JumpBox itself was OK, and the web management interface was fine (I could shutdown and restart properly).

No matter of restarting seems to get the wiki back. Accessing the standard 192.168... address produces a page with the dread Error 2006 (MySQL server has gone away (localhost), and there's no way I can see to resolve it.

Browsing the forums led me to work out how to use mysql admin with the debian-sys-maint account to shut it down and restart it, but when I bring the server back up, I get the lovely message "(Can't contact the database server: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) (localhost))" on my wiki! AARGH!

Sometimes the Wiki gets a bit further, to say: Fatal error: Call to a member function selectRow() on a non-object in /var/data/mediawiki/includes/User.php on line 752, but that's it. This error occurs if I navigate to 192.168..., whereas if I navigate to 192.168.... /mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page i get the can't connect to mysqld.sock (2) error above.

Trying to start mysqld over SSH gives me the following output:

070816 15:42:40 [Warning] Can't create test file /var/lib/mysql/SVWiki.lower-test
070816 15:42:40 [Warning] One can only use the --user switch if running as root

070816 15:42:40  InnoDB: Operating system error number 13 in a file operation.
InnoDB: The error means mysqld does not have the access rights to
InnoDB: the directory.
InnoDB: File name ./ibdata1
InnoDB: File operation call: 'open'.
InnoDB: Cannot continue operation.

Trying to start mysqld over SSH as a sudoer gives me similar output, going further to explain that mysqld is already running, or else giving me the following sort of output:

admin@SVWiki:/etc/mysql$ sudo mysqld
070816 15:46:36  InnoDB: Error: page 1 log sequence number 0 19708299
InnoDB: is in the future! Current system log sequence number 0 17639311.
InnoDB: Your database may be corrupt or you may have copied the InnoDB
InnoDB: tablespace but not the InnoDB log files. See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/backing-up.html for more information.
070816 15:46:36  InnoDB: Error: page 45 log sequence number 0 19757082
InnoDB: is in the future! Current system log sequence number 0 17639311.
InnoDB: Your database may be corrupt or you may have copied the InnoDB
InnoDB: tablespace but not the InnoDB log files. See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/backing-up.html for more information.
070816 15:46:36  InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 17639311
070816 15:46:36 [Warning] Neither --relay-log nor --relay-log-index were used; so replication may break when this MySQL server acts as a slave and has his hostname changed!! Please use '--relay-log=SVWiki-relay-bin' to avoid this problem.
070816 15:46:36 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.0.22-Debian_0ubuntu6.06.3-log'  socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'  port: 3306  Debian Etch distribution
070816 15:46:37  InnoDB: Error: page 218 log sequence number 0 19680520
InnoDB: is in the future! Current system log sequence number 0 17639311.
InnoDB: Your database may be corrupt or you may have copied the InnoDB
InnoDB: tablespace but not the InnoDB log files. See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/backing-up.html for more information.

In short: help!

I think my mac went to sleep over lunch, with Parallels running. However, as far as I know, Parallels' systems "shield" any VM from real life, in such a way that they won't be affected by the main system being put on ice (i.e. the VM is suspended to an image before / alongside the main system, and brought back up after/alongside the main system). However, could I have corrupted my VM? If so, what do I do to avoid corrupting the data in future, and is there any way to recover anything from the .idb files or what have you described on dev.mysql.com without forking over €390? It was just a small wiki!

I'm a complete novice with MySQL (it scares me), which is why this JumpBox has been a godsend, but now it seems to have bricked, with quite a bit of data inside. I've not yet gotten around to setting up a backup regimen other than making "physical" copies of the Parallels .hdd files (rest assured I will do a proper backup if and when I resurrect my Mediawiki to a working state).

I've left the JumpBox completely untouched from the developers other than the very minor mods described above. In particular, I've left the Parallels networking options as they are. I used the web interface to set a machine/hostname and a static IP, but only so I could access it using a browser bookmark.

ANY and all help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Stuart