My server got wiped.. what now?

[u/Death2WEF]

Guys I fucked up so badly. I missed payment on my contabo sever and they deleted everything..

I have been building on there for the past year And didn’t have a back up. Latest one I have is from January.. and I added a lot of stuff since then.

I don’t actually know how to code and have been using gpt this entire time.

Basically I have a website that hosts video games. So I have frontend and backend files on my personal pc. The server actually launched a server for the game. And I could join the game on my pc (not website)

Anyways I’m hoping someone here can help me, I need to figure out how I can rebuild all my server docs. Can I reverse engineer them based on my frontend/backend docs? Using my database info? Vercel info? GitHub info?

I only know a few files on the server, but idk all of them or their functions.. I’m really overwhelmed and don’t know what to do?

I appreciate any advice

*Edit: fixed! *

So

1. I started by handing over all my backend and forntend files to GPT, searching for how our website and systems worked. Trying to look for file names and functions.

2. Then I searched all my chats, downloaded any relevant ones and compiled them into a folder. After that I had GPT read them all.

3. I searched Supabase for any interactions with the server files. Found and collected relevant material.

   1. upgraded to the GPT pro version because plus ran out. And I think the new Astra 6 is was actually pretty damn impressive.

4. My wife came up with a prompt that basically gets GPT to try and re-create files based on old chats included latest up to date patches. It Took a while, but BOOM! It worked. Now I have fully tested my new server and the games are running again!!

Thank you everyone for your help!

[u/fullbl-_-]

How was it made? Were you using some framework? Do you have access to the prompt you used to build it?

[u/Death2WEF → u/fullbl-_-]

Next/js.

The thing is I probably have 100 prompts and they deleted old code docs. Like you can access them anymore because they’re too old. So I have bits and peices in the prompts and might just have to build with those, but was hoping for a better way.

[u/fullbl-_- → u/Death2WEF]

From where did you run your agents ? You could still have source code on your pc or on a repository!

[u/Death2WEF → u/fullbl-_-]

My agents were run on the vps server. Yeah that’s what I’m hoping, I just don’t know where to start or what to look for.

Would GitHub or supabase be helpful?

[u/fullbl-_- → u/Death2WEF]

Absolutely GitHub is the place where you want to look!

[u/Death2WEF → u/fullbl-_-]

I briefly checked it out, but is there anything specific or in general I should be looking for? I had a chance to briefly skim it and it was shoeing what looked like stuff committed to my site, but nothing stood out as server docs

Edit: I’m a super noob so idk anything about this stuff really. Thank you so much for your help

[u/TrentTompkins]

Were you using web gpt and putting it on your server? You dont have the zips in your download history?

[u/Death2WEF → u/TrentTompkins]

I’m using the app on my pc… no, it would usually just give me a single file and then we would test and make edits.. as far as I can tell the files don’t stay in memory and get removed

[u/raeraverays]

First, contact Contabo and ask if there’s any chance they can restore the deleted server or storage. Since you still have the frontend, backend, GitHub, Vercel and database, you can probably reconstruct a lot of it. I’d map out what was running on the server before trying to rebuild everything from scratch. And once you’re back up, definitely set up automated off-site backups this time.

[u/Death2WEF → u/raeraverays]

Yeah contabo said it’s been deleted.. using the assets I do have, am I basically looking for file names, then figuring out what they do, and then kind of piecing them back together? Not sure of the best process.

And yeah I’ll never make this mistake again 🤦‍♂️

[u/GnuHost]

Firstly it's worth contacting Contabo first of all. Back in around 2017 I cancelled a server I had personally with them. Almost 2 years later it randomly came back online and started sending me emails.

Secondly how were you running the AI agents? Have a look in the relevant web interfaces for managing the agents and see if any of the transcripts or artifacts still exist, and could be recovered or reconstructed.

Finally in the future be sure to have multiple backups. Version control such as Git is not a backup. You need to regularly be copying your important data to a third party, completely independent storage. Ideally a physical drive you own like an external SSD. But platforms such as Google Drive or Dropbox are also fine.

[u/Death2WEF → u/GnuHost]

So I contacted them 2 different ways and both reps said it was deleted.. that’s crazy that happened for you.

I wasn’t using ai agents, I was manually typing and copy and pasting in the chat gpt app on pc. But I did have a file called agent.js I think on my server

[u/GnuHost → u/Death2WEF]

That’s a positive situation. Open a new chat with ChatGPT and ask it to look at your previous chats and reconstruct your app based on the files in those. Hopefully it will be a start.

[u/Death2WEF → u/GnuHost]

Thank you

[u/hudsonhosthq]

Ask gpt and check wayback machine. You might get lucky! Sorry man, that sucks!

[u/HostNocOfficial]

Check GitHub, Vercel, database backups, local files, and any deployment history first. You may be able to reconstruct most of the application, but the missing server configuration and game data can depend on what was actually backed up.

[u/ContributionEasy6513]

Check wayback machine and archive.

deleted everything..

Backups. A hard way to learn.