CUBS and the Oct 17 backup

I was unprepared (not having a recent budget report) for the zeroing out of our ward’s budget. After reading a few forum posts and discovering the relative ease a few of you have had in restoring a pre-CUBS backup to a virtual XP machine to recreate that report, and, being somewhat technically inclined, I decided to take the plunge. It has been a frustrating experience and I wondering if I am just missing something that may be obvious to someone on this forum.
First let me explain that the end result of my restoration attempts has always and consistently been the restore aborting with the message “An Error Has Occurred”.

What I have done:
1) Downloaded the 3.2.3_18992 October 5, 2010 installer from mls.lds.org
2) Set the Virtual Machine system date and time to various values around and including Oct 17, 2010
3) Installed MLS on an XP virtual machine (SP3)
4) Set up the unit and admin information
5) Selected the option “Restore from a File”
6) Selected the Oct 17, 2010 .bak file (although I have tried others as well)
7) Accepted the dialogue box that all data since the backup will be lost
8) Entered the user name and password (finance clerk) in my case
9) After only a few seconds of the “restoring the data base” progress bar, I get “An Error Occurred”.

I am left with the following puzzlements:
1) Never having done a restore before, at first blush it might seem there is something corrupt with the backup. If this is true, then all of our backups are corrupt, because I have tried several previous backups all with the same result.
2) Is there some component I am missing in the virtual XP machine that is causing the error; perhaps some security or other piece? I have tried this on 2 different hardware platforms both with Microsoft XP Mode.
3) Does the ward financial clerk actually have the correct privileges to do a restore? Does it need to be the Ward Clerk or someone else?
4) Others have mentioned the system date is a factor in restoring correctly. I have tried setting the system date to Oct 16, 2010, to Oct 17, 2010 (with the time both before and after the date of the .bak file) and Oct 18, 2010 all with the same result.
5) Some have mentioned that that virtual machine should have internet access cut-off. I have tried both with and without internet access enabled.

I guess I just assumed that this whole process would be a bit easier. Perhaps in all this someone can find something I am overlooking. Thanks in advance.
Doug Jepson
Ward Financial Clerk

djepson wrote:3) Does the ward financial clerk actually have the correct privileges to do a restore? Does it need to be the Ward Clerk or someone else?

The permissions required are not directly related to your calling. What is required to restore a backup is MLS Administrator permissions. In many wards those permissions will be given to the ward clerk, but depending on technical expertise and particular assignments, it could be someone else (hopefully two people so there is someone to back up the primary administrator).

djepson wrote:4) Others have mentioned the system date is a factor in restoring correctly. I have tried setting the system date to Oct 16, 2010, to Oct 17, 2010 (with the time both before and after the date of the .bak file) and Oct 18, 2010 all with the same result.

The system date is not a factor in restoring correctly. It's just that you have to set the system date to a date/time before 11:59pm on October 17 before logging in again if you are restoring a pre-CUBS backup. If you're having problems doing the restore itself, the system date is not the cause of your problems.

djepson wrote:5) Some have mentioned that that virtual machine should have internet access cut-off. I have tried both with and without internet access enabled.

That's just a safety recommendation. You absolutely do not want to do a MLS Send/Receive when you are looking at an old backup, so this helps make sure that you don't. It has nothing to do with the process of restoring the backup itself.

djepson wrote:
I am left with the following puzzlements:
1) Never having done a restore before, at first blush it might seem there is something corrupt with the backup. If this is true, then all of our backups are corrupt, because I have tried several previous backups all with the same result.
2) Is there some component I am missing in the virtual XP machine that is causing the error; perhaps some security or other piece? I have tried this on 2 different hardware platforms both with Microsoft XP Mode.
3) Does the ward financial clerk actually have the correct privileges to do a restore? Does it need to be the Ward Clerk or someone else?


I guess I just assumed that this whole process would be a bit easier. Perhaps in all this someone can find something I am overlooking. Thanks in advance.
Doug Jepson
Ward Financial Clerk

I am also a Ward Financial Clerk, and I don't have access to restore from a backup. At least, not from the MLS screen. Instead, when installing MLS on a second computer, I selected "Finance Only." I don't know why that would affect anything, just that it worked for me.

LVAllen wrote:I am also a Ward Financial Clerk, and I don't have access to restore from a backup. At least, not from the MLS screen. Instead, when installing MLS on a second computer, I selected "Finance Only." I don't know why that would affect anything, just that it worked for me.

When you install MLS on a second computer, you become the MLS administrator, which as I mentioned before is the factor that determines whether you can restore a backup.

Note that anytime you involve a second computer, be very careful that the data is secure and that you don't do any MLS Send/Receive on that second system.

Alan_Brown wrote:When you install MLS on a second computer, you become the MLS administrator, which as I mentioned before is the factor that determines whether you can restore a backup.

Note that anytime you involve a second computer, be very careful that the data is secure and that you don't do any MLS Send/Receive on that second system.

There must/might (?) be a correlation between the user name/password embedded in the backup file and the user/name established when installing on the backup PC. I have tried making the new installation admin the same user name and password as that in the .bak file. That did not work. I got the same error "An Error Occurred". But I am not an admin normally (embedded in the .bak). By the way, can anyone verify that is, in fact, the error one would get for a permissions problem? I will try tonight with our "real" admin, the Ward Clerk and see if that makes a difference.

Just as a follow-up on my problems with restoring my MLS backup to a Virtual Machine, I found that the error I was receiving ("an error occurred") was due to a real-time virus scanner I had running. After disabling it, the backup restored without a hitch. It doesn't sound like others are having any related problems, but I thought I would mention it.

My stake clerk and I discussed the hypothetical possibility of using a standalone, unnetworked XP box to install a copy of our ward MLS as of 10/17 from the backup, for read-only purposes. If we did that, wouldn't we have to install an instance of MLS 3.2.2? And is a copy of that install package still available?

Also, so long as the PC involved is owned by the stake, are there any policy problems with doing this?

boomerbubba wrote:If we did that, wouldn't we have to install an instance of MLS 3.2.2?

If you had already upgraded to 3.2.3 by that point, I don't think you'd be able to do a restore. An older MLS won't always accept the backup from a newer version.

3.2.3 isn't the problem. What you need is to go back to Oct 17.

RussellHltn wrote:If you had already upgraded to 3.2.3 by that point, I don't think you'd be able to do a restore. An older MLS won't always accept the backup from a newer version.

3.2.3 isn't the problem. What you need is to go back to Oct 17.

I didn't install 3.2.3. Our ward clerk did. I thought that happened after 10/17, but that may just be my misunderstanding. Maybe we were on 3.2.3 on 10/17 and I didn't notice.

Was it not 3.2.3 that changed the functionality of MLS? Or was the different functionality already baked in the cake and hidden, triggered only by some signal of the send-receive on the morning of 10/24? The functionality we saw on 10/17 is certainly gone now, along with the old data detail.

In any case, we have good data backups from the evening of 10/17.

boomerbubba wrote:Was it not 3.2.3 that changed the functionality of MLS? Or was the different functionality already baked in the cake and hidden, triggered only by some signal of the send-receive on the morning of 10/24?

I think it's "Baked in the cake". I made sure all my wards were on 3.2.3 prior to 10/17. From what I understand it was a file sent down from CHQ that locked everyone out once the clock turned 10/18. The CUFS download is what unlocked it.

But if you want to check, have a look at the MLS log file. It will probably tell you what version you were on at the time.

boomerbubba wrote:I didn't install 3.2.3. Our ward clerk did. I thought that happened after 10/17, but that may just be my misunderstanding. Maybe we were on 3.2.3 on 10/17 and I didn't notice.

Was it not 3.2.3 that changed the functionality of MLS? Or was the different functionality already baked in the cake and hidden, triggered only by some signal of the send-receive on the morning of 10/24? The functionality we saw on 10/17 is certainly gone now, along with the old data detail.

In any case, we have good data backups from the evening of 10/17.

You were on 3.2.3 before the 17th. The patch was sent down a couple weeks earlier. The intent was to be on 3.2.3 before the CUBS conversion.

Conversion to CUBS consisted of downloading an installer. The installer actually rewrote your financial databases, replacing your local info with CHQ's, and possibly contained some MLS patches as well to add the new functionality.

crislapi wrote:and possibly contained some MLS patches as well to add the new functionality.

It didn't change the version, but it could have changed the build number. But I think it would be bad form to change functionality in a build and not a version.

Keep in mind that our Northern neighbors have been on CUBS for awhile. Since I don't think the church wants to run two code sets, I'll bet that 3.2.2 was fully capable of CUBS.

Of course I've been waiting for someone to raise the question - how do you get a test unit install of CUBS? I haven't tried installing 3.2.3 on my support box, but I kinda doubt if it will be CUBS-like.

Of course I've been waiting for someone to raise the question - how do you get a test unit install of CUBS? I haven't tried installing 3.2.3 on my support box, but I kinda doubt if it will be CUBS-like.