all my images "vanished" (404 error)

[basil]

 I've been using 4images for a couple years, and never any problems.  Now, I haven't been to my page in a month or two, and suddenly all of my images have "vanished" meaning a 404 page-not-found error for the images.

Check out my gallery for yourself:
http://photos.basilsprig.org/

* I haven't upgraded php or 4 images lately
* I haven't made any configuration changes lately
* the directory permissions seem to be correct 777 for folders and 666 for files
* you can actually get to the images if you look at the file system and know where they are, for example:
http://photos.basilsprig.org/data/media/17/
is the photos you should be seeing in my "trip to NYC" gallery here: http://photos.basilsprig.org/categories.php?cat_id=17  (or at least some of them)

I can't imagine how that would have happened.  I suspect some database corruption.  I tried the "check images" thing in the admin GUI and it says it can't find any images when I search for them by various keynames that should be associated with them, etc.

When I poke around looking at the database tables, they all seem to be there, althought I don't know if there is a spec here somewhere for how the database is supposed to look, or if anyone could suggest to me a SQL query to make that would tell the same thing as a search.

What do you guys think?  A database problem?   Any suggested solutions, or where to look next?

Why would it have happened? 

My versions:
Apache version   1.3.37 (Unix)
PHP version   4.4.6
MySQL version   4.1.22-standard-log

Thanks,
Regards!
Basil

[basil]

Okay, that was really lame!  I figured out what the problem was, but have no idea how it could have happened.

I figured it out by trying to load a new image, and getting an error message that jpg is not allowed.

There's a setting on the settings page called (image upload) section, called "Valid file extensions".  Somehow on my system this value got changed to php, which is ridiculous as far as I can tell: any reason this value would ever say "php"?

So, anyway, I added jpg,gif,png etc as valid image types, and hit refresh, and Voila!  All my images are back.

Well, I thought I'd tell you what was up, in case anyone else ever has this problem.

Meanwhile, off to change all my passwords, 'cause I know I certainly didn't change that value to "php"

Regards,
Basil

[Nicky]

search via Admin CP for images with extension .php and delete them all ASAP.