Upgdade script 2.1.4 failing: incorrect string

[Kantis]

My site is currently running 2.0.19. When trying to upgrade, the script stops around on 92% (updating smileys) and says "incorrect string".

This site is using Finnish language. I've tried converting the database to UTF-8 but always the same thing.

Any idea how to proceed with this?

[Steve]

Switch to English and try again?

[Kantis]

Switch to English and try again?

Does it really solve this? I think I tried, but no 100% sure. It was such a mess. I tried it couple of times with different settings (ISO, UTF-8, finninsh, english).

It would be also interesting to understand what causes this. The debug message doesn't really tell much. Some database operation just fails in "updating smileys" phase because of some illegal characters.

[Kindred]

We KNOW that the upgrade works in English and frequently has problems with other languages being set.
That's why the upgrade instructions say to reset the default language to English before upgrading

[Sir Osis of Liver]

You have to restart upgrade from beginning after setting default language to english.  Upgrader leaves a line of code in Settings.php to mark where it left off, that must be deleted.

[Kantis]

Do I need to convert to UTF-8 before update? Now I'm trying to just upgrade with default as english. My server gives me 500 and empty page and I have no idea how to debug this. If I try to upgrade from command line, upgrade.php say it is finished, but the site still gives me empty HTTP status 500.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I believe the upgrader converts to utf-8, but that won't cause a 500 error.  You should restore your 2.0.19 install from backups, make sure it's running correctly, set default language to english, then try upgrade again.

[Kantis]

I believe the upgrader converts to utf-8, but that won't cause a 500 error.  You should restore your 2.0.19 install from backups, make sure it's running correctly, set default language to english, then try upgrade again.

Ok thanks, tried it now few times. For some reason my server won't like the upgrade procedure. Maybe my PHP is not fully compatible? This is PHP 8.0.30. upgrade.php finishes from command line but server just spits out 500 after this.

I have full control on this server, so any extra tips for debugging would be very much appreciated.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If upgrade.php completes database should be upgraded.  Try uploading a clean set of files less Settings.php.  Corrupt file can cause 500 error.

[Doug Heffernan]

Ok thanks, tried it now few times. For some reason my server won't like the upgrade procedure.

Are you getting the same error message or new ones? If the latter, can you please post them?

Can you also check the server error log and post here the most recent error messages logged in there pertaining to this?

[Kantis]

Ok thanks, tried it now few times. For some reason my server won't like the upgrade procedure.

Are you getting the same error message or new ones? If the latter, can you please post them?

Can you also check the server error log and post here the most recent error messages logged in there pertaining to this?

There's absolutely no errors anywhere, just empty page with error 500, even after I tried to restore clean set up files after successful upgrade.php. So the apache access log just says 500, nothing in the error log.

I wish there was some sort of debug mechanism to see after which database query the failure happens.

[Kindred]

If your server is not recording 500 errors, then you need someone to fix your server config

[Kantis]

If your server is not recording 500 errors, then you need someone to fix your server config

What do you mean? I see the request and status 500 in the logs, but it doesn't tell me anything.

And it is going to be me who does any fixing.

[Kantis]

I suppose I could just run the index.php manually from command line to see what it produces. I think the 500 is caused by php not producing correct HTML.

[Kantis]

I think I found now something from php-fm debug logs... I see lines like this:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Failed opening required '/QueryString.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php') in /var/www/html/index.php:73

So something seems to be problematic with the PHP environment. That's so strange.

[Kantis]

Finally got it! Settings.php was severy corrupted. Thanks for the help guys!

[Kantis]

Ok so it looks like any modification to Settings.php corrupts it, so basically my upgrade is not usable.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

That should not happen in a correctly configured php environment.

[Kantis]

That should not happen in a correctly configured php environment.

There was something strange with the file, I suppose some unsupported setting from 2.0.19. Basically I created manually new config with db and directory settings, and now the file backup is working without corruption. I don't know what happened, but now the new forum is running and looks stable!