All upload directories gone

Software Support
1

On July 15th the disaster struck our system. All subdirectories of files/journals/1/articles are gone. Is any possibility Journal Manager have involuntarily cleaned all paper data? What may be the reason. The event is rather scary, even if we can restore the content from backups.

2

I don’t know of any function within OJS which could trigger this.

If someone had shell access (SSH) or filesystem access (CPanel) it would be possible to accidentally move or remove a set of directories. This is the most likely scenario.

Another possibility would be a malicious attack on the server. The files_dir should be readable and writable by the webserver, but protected from other users and not exposed by the webserver to the world. Most other OJS files and directories (except cache and public) should not be writable by the webserver. Loose permissions, such as “777” can reduce your security and expose you to attacks.

3

Well, folders are 755 and files are 644. It indeed looks like like unwilling pull with mouse. The problem we have now is that journal manager have backuped files to her own structure of folders and don’t know the exact setup of article subfolders. May you send us a sample?

Best regards

4

Under articles, you should find folders matching the numeric article id, then under each article id, folders of submission, public, and/or supp (depending on what was submitted or published). Under submission there will be folders representing the workflow status (for example, copyedit, original, review). Under each of these terminal folders, you will find the actual files.

articles/680/supp/680-2786-1-SP.pdf
articles/680/supp/680-2787-1-SP.txt
articles/680/submission/review/680-2789-1-RV.pdf
articles/680/submission/original/680-2785-1-SM.pdf
articles/680/submission/copyedit/680-2790-1-CE.pdf
articles/680/public/680-2791-1-PB.pdf

Hopefully your articles folder was just moved to some other location on your server and you can move it back when found.

5

Thank you,

There is also editor subdir and mysterious AT in the database recorded filename…

6

Note that the actual files and directories will vary widely based on the actions related to the particular submission.

7

Yes, will make some experiments, guess At is from attachement

8

If -AT appears at the end of the filename, it is probably the initials of user who uploaded the file.