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changing servers while upgrading

Started by remingtonk, November 21, 2017, 09:56:14 AM

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Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

The upgrade should be smooth sailing really, but let us know if you come across something surprising. :)

Upgrading SMF
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Kindred

You could also have used the repair_settings.php tool instead of dumping the settings table... that's what the tool is for
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

remingtonk

Unfortunately, we couldn't get the repair_settings.php tool to work.  I understand that is what it was meant for.  It might be because we tried it at the wrong point.  I was happy enough to figure out the dependencies myself, since there is still more work to do.  Self fixing seemed a bit easier that troubleshooting whatever was going on with our version of repair_settings.php. 

Here's the next question, just asking for a pointer:   

The 1.1.21 version is up and working - data transferred fine, eventually.  But I'm getting confused with the documentation for "upgrading" to 2.0.15.  I have a backup of the database, and a backup of the file structure.   I have the 2.0.15(large upgrade) downloaded in a new folder.   I think I'm missing a step of merging that with the existing folder, perhaps?  I'm having trouble telling whether that must happen before running upgrade.php, or if that's part of the upgrade.php process.  Running smf/upgrade.php fails with a screen that doesn't look right (see attached), and talks about YaBB, which I know nothing about.

I've been reading through the upgrade support documentation, but I might be missing something obvious you could point me to.

I'm probably going to try to transfer the 1.1.21 forum to the intended target server, because the group has been out of commission and they need to have the group working again, even if the SMF version is still out of date - at least it's not as out of date as it was last week.   

If you have any ideas about what I'm missing with upgrading, please let me know.  It's probably just my lack of familiarity with the SMF lingo, but I'm trying!

Thanks for the patience and help.
Newbie, getting older by the minute

Illori

upload the 2.0.15 files to override what you have now, then run upgrade.php. dont use a new folder at all.

remingtonk

Will try - I'm not actually "uploading", I'm on a local server, so I have to, I think, copy in the Large Upgrade files to the existing directory so that they will clobber any existing conflicting files, while preserving other non-conflicting files.  Does that sound right?  I'm working with command line linux - so "uploading files to override" gives me a hint, but doesn't quite match my environment.  I think, from what you said, is that I need to copy the upgrade files into the existing directory, which will overwrite some files, but leave others intact.

Newbie, getting older by the minute

Sir Osis of Liver

The usual way to upgrade from 1.1.21 -> 2.0.15 is to upload the upgrade package into existing forum directory, overwriting 1.1 files, then run upgrade.php, which ups the database to 2.0.  If you want to be cautious and retain the 1.1 install untouched, rename existing directory (i.e., /forum -> /forum_sav), create a new forum directory with same name as original install (/forum), upload 2.0.15 upgrade package to new directory, copy Settings.php and Settings_bak.php from old to new, run upgrade.php in new directory.  This will result in a clean 2.0.15 install connected to upgraded production database.  You can then copy attachments and custom avatars from old to new.  I've done this quite a few times on damaged forums, the 1.1 install is still intact when you're done.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

Illori

you really should copy over the attachments and avatars before running upgrade.php if the upgrade process were to need to modify those files for some reason if they are not present the change will not be applied.

Sir Osis of Liver

For what reason would it modify attachments or avatars?
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

Arantor

The original install was 1.1.11, right? That *should* be past the point at which the upgrader would need to do some work on the files (1.1.9 would be that point)

remingtonk

Quote from: Arantor on January 07, 2018, 04:55:20 PM
The original install was 1.1.11, right? That *should* be past the point at which the upgrader would need to do some work on the files (1.1.9 would be that point)

Original was 1.1.11. Yes. But we have a working install of 1.1.21. 
Newbie, getting older by the minute

Sir Osis of Liver

I've never had a problem doing it this way, but I would never attempt a direct upgrade from 1.1.9 -> 2.0, it doesn't work.  You have to go 1.1.9 -> 1.1.21, which would make any necessary changes to attachments or avatars, then 1.1.21 -> 2.0.15.  Since OP is already at 1.1.21, it's good to go.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Quote from: Sir Osis of Liver on January 07, 2018, 05:07:02 PM
I've never had a problem doing it this way, but I would never attempt a direct upgrade from 1.1.9 -> 2.0, it doesn't work.  You have to go 1.1.9 -> 1.1.21, which would make any necessary changes to attachments or avatars, then 1.1.21 -> 2.0.15.  Since OP is already at 1.1.21, it's good to go.
As far as I know, the upgrade should work from older versions of 1.1 just as well.
It is originally designed to work on any earlier version, is there really a problem with it?
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Sir Osis of Liver

I've had it fail a couple of times, I believe others have as well.  Don't remember offhand how far back the start versions were, but upgrade to 2.0 fails midway.  1.1.x -> 1.1.21 -> 2.0.15 works on these installs.  Don't know what causes the problem.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

OK, it's been a while that I've used the upgrade package for real, but I have upgraded old 1.1 installs to 2.0 in past without any problems.
If someone can pinpoint a failure point in the script, it would warrant a bug report IMO. That is why I was asking.
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

remingtonk

Believe it or not, I'm still working on this.   I only have a little bit of time for it, so it's taking a long time to get everything sorted out.

Here's an interesting thing that happened the other day:

On the intended replacement server, after uploading a snapshot of current server data and current server files, I was running repair_settings.php.  Unfortunately, somewhere in there (I've not traced it yet), the browser managing the repair_settings skipped over to the old URL/server (I was logged in there in another browser, trying to compare settings, and didn't notice that the new server's browser redirected there), so when I hit "save" in settings, it saved the settings to the old server, which made that previously working forum inoperable.  Our forum users there were quite surprised to be suddenly cut off - and I had to scramble around to repair the settings on that server, which had been just fine until I tried to bring the new one up.   :P   

I'm lucky that the forum I'm working on has just a small, friendly user group (personal friends), and they know they have just volunteer admins who have other jobs and are working on trying to move the forum and update it.   My partner in crime and I are learning new things about SMF every day, so by the time we get our little forum moved/updated (about 2025 at this rate), we should be experts!
Newbie, getting older by the minute

Sir Osis of Liver

Quote from: Sir Osis of Liver on November 21, 2017, 04:20:28 PM
Best approach would be to upgrade to current version on old server (assuming forum is working correctly there), then move everything to new server.  You may not be able to upgrade from 1.1.11 to 2.0.14 directly.  Go from 1.1.11 to 1.1.21, make sure everything's working, then upgrade 1.1.11 to 2.0.14.

Did you ever try doing this?  If old install is up and running, you should be able to use package manager to patch from .11 to .21, then full upgrade package to upgrade to 2.0.15.  Problems with database import are most likely being caused by this -

Quote from: Arantor on December 02, 2017, 10:08:05 AM
The problem is not that you need to update MySQL. The problem is that 1.1.x is so old it doesn't support newer PHP or newer MySQL.

I'd be inclined to do the upgrade to 2.0.13 (specifically) before moving, then move, then use the patches to move to 2.0.15.

All of this has been explained several different ways by different people trying to help you, both here and via pm.  You should have been done with this over a month ago.  Don't really understand why you're still having problems.

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

remingtonk

Here are some reasons I'm still having problems:


  • I have only recently inherited SMF, so the whole system is new to me. It is not as easy as you may think to understand what is going on.
  • It was only last week I got the credentials to log into the "old" (current) server to see what is there. Before that, I was trying a workaround with an intermediate server - it was all I could do without having the old one available to me.
  • The "old" server's web configuration is not one I'm familiar with, and quite different from the Amazon server we're moving to, which I do know. File ownership for the web-servers' files are very different on each server, so I have to map the ownership properly. And because the new server also runs a Wordpress multi-press installation that is important for my real job, I have to be very very careful about experimenting.
  • I learned through this thread that exports have been known to fail during the export of smf_messages silently, so I was getting only a partial export. I assumed that the successful completion of the query meant the export was complete when it was not. And only found out that messages weren't coming through because I asked here.
  • I did follow the advice of going from 1.11 to 1.21 to 2.14, and explained the problem points in each of many attempts in this thread.

I think you maybe haven't tried a migration from server to server - version to version.   It really isn't as simple as you want/intend it to be.
Newbie, getting older by the minute

Sir Osis of Liver

Well, everything's simple if you know how.  One of the problems in support is trying to determine the exact nature of the problem and the experience level of the poster, in this case someone who is new to SMF.  We've been trying to isolate your problem to just upgrading the forum, which can easily be done on old server if the forum is running, using package manager.  Once you've upgraded to 1.1.21, your database should be compatible with mysql version installed on your new server and import without error.  If you're getting a partial dump, that's a different problem, and can be addressed after upgrade is completed on old server.  As Arantor mentioned earlier, you can upgrade to 2.0.13 on server running php 5.2, then upgrade to 2.0.15 after moving to new server, but I'd be inclined to move 1.1.21 forum, then upgrade directly to 2.0.15 on new server.
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

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