PHP 8+ breaks the site (v2.1.4)?

[KrisB]

Hi Folks,
I run private forum for a few friends. It was running well with SMF version 2.0.19.
The host company then upgraded PHP to 8.2 which broke the site. I realised it was because I hadn't upgraded my SMF version in a while, fair enough. In the admin tools of my host I could put this back to PHP 7.2, which I did and got it back running.
I then upgraded the forum to 2.1.4, which went well, the site was working and had no errors.
But now putting the server back to PHP 8.2 still crashes the forum?
I get
"currently unable to handle this request.
HTTP ERROR 500
"
I can keep it working with PHP 7.2, but obviously that won't work forever ... Any suggestions as to where to go from here? I thought 2.1.4 worked with PHP 8+?
Thanks
Kris

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

First thing I would look at, is your server error log. What exactly is the HTTP 500? What gets logged?
SMF 2.1.4 should be fine with PHP 8.2 (and 8.3) so most likely explanation is custom code, a modification perhaps?

[KrisB]

Thank you for replying.

The php error log says:

[18-Nov-2024 13:22:03 UTC] PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected integer "27" in /home/customer/www/[redacted]/public_html/forum/Settings.php on line 133

which is the database password?

The password does have special characters in it ... "#[}%".

[KrisB]

Yes, that was it. Thank you.

The special characters in the database password fouled up the creation of the settings file properly so that it caused the error. Why that was a problem in 8.2 but not 7.4 I don't know, but changing the password to one without special characters in it fixed it.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

That sounds odd, but good that you figured it out.