Upgrade 2.0.19 to 2.1.4: subs.php / subs-charset.php Thousands of errors

[madskaizer]

Hi All

I have been using SMF since 2017, very pleased with the software. Back in 2017, I used a lot of packages and that turned into a problem for upgrading, so its been a few years, where I considered going to 2.1.

On the 14th January 2025, I experienced a forum breakdown (2.0.19) due to a proces deadlock from AI bots hammering the site and DNS reversal took many resources. So forum got stuck and host had to kill all my processes, to even get beyond 503 answers.

Now that I was already looking into 2 days of downtime, I went for the upgrade to 2.1.4.

Backup went fine.
Upgrade went fine.
Configuration went fine.

All inline attachments was however lost, as that was handled by a mod in 2.0.19 and did not translate to the new core feature of inline attachment.

I installed "PM and inline attachment" mod, which luckily now has a legacy mode, so the old inline attachments are shown again and I tested uploading new images, all works fine seen from frontend.

I installed ProCurve theme, but there is no difference from default or that one, to the errors generated.

No matter what I do on the forum, or any other user/guest. It generates hundreds of errors, like the ones attached here.

I am puzzled as how to attack this issue and really need some help

hxxp:highvoltageforum.net [nonactive]

[madskaizer]

I can browse around on the forum, and last night a user posted a new thread and that maybe killed the forum?

I tried to reply to this topic: hxxp:highvoltageforum.net/index.php?topic=3235.0 [nonactive]

But all I get, is a 500 error thrown in browser.

I can't even find a error captured from this, as log is thousands lines long and if I try to find the page with the error, another hundred is added each time

EDIT 08:52 17-01-2025: I read all other topics on subs.php errors and found this one mentioning database collation: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=560497.0

[madskaizer]

Not a bump, but got message that my time limit for editing was surpassed. So I can only add new information with a new post? Read the rules and hope this is ok.

I read all other topics on subs.php errors and found this one mentioning database collation: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=560497.0

Settings.php:
######### Legacy Settings #########
# UTF-8 is now the only character set supported in 2.1.
$db_character_set = 'utf8';

I checked my database, what I found weird is that backup and new tables, seem to just be everything (all old packages were copied as well) but old packages tables are properly not used and should not be an issue, like the ads mod that has a different collation:

[Doug Heffernan]

But all I get, is a 500 error thrown in browser.

Those type of errors are almost always server related. Can you check the server error log page and post here the most recent logged messages?

Regarding the errors in your forum error log, what is your php version?

[Kindred]

1- if you took a real backup at the host/server level - you can delete all of the backup_ tables.
2- all tables and all columns should be using utf8mb3_general_ci

[madskaizer]

Thank you very much! I had never thought about checking the PHP version, as I assumed it was just latest version. But it was indeed set to PHP5.6 and setting to inherit (PHP8.3) made everything work!

I am still puzzled as to why the forum worked for 3-4 posts, before crapping out 

Hopefully this thread can help someone else in the future