YaBB SE 1.5.1 conversion challenge...

[jcompton]

Although the ultimate goal is an SMF conversion, the biggest hurdle is the YaBB 1.5.1 source install... please bear with me, and hopefully someone will have a suggestion.

We are trying to rescue a YaBB SE 1.5.1 forum and preserve it, with a conversion step to SMF, on another server. The original admin has abandoned the site and is unhelpful. There was one other user with forum administrator access and I've engaged her help to preserve the forum, but unfortunately, the built-in forum dump command dies with some sort of out-of-memory error after about 2.2 MB (and the DB would be considerably larger than that.) We lack FTP access, so we can't pull the database login/password out of the config file.

So my question, really, is: how can we pull this database out if YaBB can't properly dump it to us? In 1.4.1, it would display the database username and password in plaintext, but that "feature" seems to have been removed in 1.5.1's admin panel. Is there any way to "trick" 1.5.1 into giving a forum administrator that information, or access to the configuration PHP file in plaintext, or something else of the sort? Otherwise, a 60K post forum may be gone for good when the ISP decides to remove it, which could happen at any time.

I know the ISP could give us the database, but it's a free provider and therefore they have little incentive to help us. It would be easiest if we can get the remaining forum administrator enough access to do what needs to be done.

[Oldiesmann]

Unfortunately, without FTP access, you're pretty much out of luck. Sorry.

[[Unknown]]

So, there's no way to get to the database, is there?  You don't have any access to the control panel, etc.?

-[Unknown]

[Grudge]

I can't remember much about YSE 1.5.1 now, but could you enable uploading of PHP files as attachments? If so that would be one way around it...

Also - beforing downloading the backup did you try emptying out the error log (and click log if it lets you), as that can sometimes represent a big chunk of the data.

EDIT: Or does the package manager work on 1.5.1? Could upload a better "backup" script as a package?

[[Unknown]]

I can't remember much about YSE 1.5.1 now, but could you enable uploading of PHP files as attachments? If so that would be one way around it...

Yes, that would work.  Upload a script that would make a backup or dump the contents of Settings.php.

-[Unknown]

[jcompton]

Thanks, guys, we'll try that. It turns out that 1.5.1 _did_ have the user/password info, somebody didn't look as hard as I thought... that's still not 100% helpful because the server is rejecting external mysqldump connections, but we'll try the error log bit and see if we can write a suitable backup script.

[Thunderace]

Try THIS

I used these to back up a mambo/SMF combo . .went without a glitch.