Answered Site hacked, problem restoring database

One of my sites were hacked before I saw the critical updates

I decided to completely erase the files on the server and re-install as I wasn't confident of identifying all malicious files.

Downloaded and installed Revo 2.6.5 no problem

However once I restore my database backup, I get an error

Fatal error: Call to a member function setProcessingElement() on a non-object in /home2/mysite/public_html/core/model/modx/modelement.class.php on line 253

Searched for a solution, followed all the advice (clear cache, repair tables, followed this thread https://forums.modx.com/thread/101464/fatal-error-after-renaming-of-manager#dis-post-547492 etc). Nothing works.

It doesn't seem to matter how far back I go with the backup file. Very annoying.

(Another possible clue, when I restored the database the first couple of times, manager would log me out and I couldn't get back in. Even sending a recovery email proved futile, the given password was similarly rejected. I ended up reinstalling and restoring my database backup minus the user tables.)

Any pointers? [ed. note: grogorio last edited this post 5 years, 9 months ago.]

Thanks for your help Andy. I followed your instructions 1 to 4 and ran into the same problem with the fatal error.

However I tried again but this time only restored the following tables as a last throw of the dice:

site_content
site_htmlsnippets
site_plugins
site_plugin_events
site_snippets
site_templates
site_tmplvars
site_tmplvar_access
site_tmplvar_contentvalues
site_tmplvar_templates

which is probably bad practice but I got my site up again. Menus aren't working yet but I think all that's required is a bit of Wayfinder configuration.

Installed upgradeMODX and upgraded to 2.6.5 ok so the site is secure for now.

One strange thing, after the upgrade all my templates appear under the UpgradeMODX category. Not a big deal but had me wondering where the hell my templates were and how come my site is working without them?

That error comes from MODX being unable of loading the parser. Perhaps your database had system settings pointing to use the pdoTools parser, but as you did not yet install pdoTools on the clean installation, that would have caused that error. By more selectively restoring your database you got around that.

One strange thing, after the upgrade all my templates appear under the UpgradeMODX category. Not a big deal but had me wondering where the hell my templates were and how come my site is working without them?

Your categories may have a different ID now. You can try importing your categories table as well to restore that.

ok, but I didn't have pdoTools installed at any time
I tried importing the missing categories but no joy with that

I've pretty much got a fresh site up and running in a sub-directory, lots of tedious copying and pasting but ultimately faster than trying to troubleshoot the main site.

Will run it from the sub-direcrtory, or move it to root.

Thanks all for your help.

The moral of this story is to back up all your files whenever you back up the DB. That way, you have a complete MODX site you can revert to.

yes what a sorry tale, I had a backup strategy but not a very good one it seems.

and found this in my email spam folder just now, from MODX Systems, sent 6 days ago
"Upgrade Your MODX Revolution Sites Now—Critical Security Vulnerability"

Ouch. I feel your pain.