New installation .. not smooth (but not impossible)

[Rigel_Kentaurus]

Yesterday I finally decided to treat myself to a IPB license. So far, this is my feedback. I was able to solve all issues and granted me having problems may be due to the fact it's the first time I use IPB, but I am hoping you find this feedback useful. I installed the 3.1beta

The download was fast, I went to open the documentation, and to read the instructions. First of all, I encountered that I needed to chmod directories. Ugh, I thought, but that's ok. I felt sooo CGI doing chmods. Not a problem anyway. However, two things crossed my mind:

1) Why? Oh why? Do you ask me to chmod conf_global.php to 777.... 666 should be enough. I am not giving executable permissions to a script. Yes. I chmoded a+w (666) and it was enough. It felt a little amateurish to ask for 777, though, not a big deal
2) cache/lang, cache/skin, cache/tmp .. oh my .. too many. To tell you the truth, at that point I did chmod -R to cache. If cache is 777 you can easily create the rest of the directories yourself (the php script), why are you asking me to upload an empty directory and then chmod it if the parent already has chmod? Anyway, not a big deal.

... Installation was flawless (although a little boring)

3) I pointed my self to the forum, and I COULD NOT view a thing. That was a major issue for me. I got an error that said "Unable to determine IP address". Sigh*
This is a bug in the software. I had to write http://127.0.0.1 instead of localhost, then I was able to login. But all the links are generated with localhost in an absolute way so I didn't really got that far. Really annoying.
(You can reproduce this bug, in a Macbook, with IPv6 enabled, it resolves my ip adress as :0 instead of 127.0.0.1 so some special considerations should be made. Since this only happens with localhost it might not be a big deal)
I had to change the conf_global.php from localhost to 127.0.0.1 and everything started working


4) Then, my next stop was .. downloading the import script. No luck.
a) I searched the downloads area in the clients area.. I could not find it
b) Then I went to the resources area (http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/official.html) and I searched for "vBulletin", no results, sigh*
c) Finally, I searched for conversions, that was the trick

However, in this page (http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/official.html?record=175)
In the step 2, it said, "follow our installing applications guide", with a link to here: http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/official.html?record=115
And that, is broken

At that point .. it was late and I was giving up. I am sure I can locate that installing applications guide but it would be nice not to have broken links in the instructions ;)

Next I will be trying the conversion.. I will give you feedback about that, too (if anybody wants to listen). So far the installation was not flawless but nothing that could not be managed. I still don't see a total novice attempting it, though.

[Wolfie]

Not sure if this will be of any help, but if you have shell access, then I say, upload the zip file onto the server, extract it using the -qU options, then move the contents of the board/upload/ folder to where you want your board to be at. I do that and it all works for me.

As far as your localhost issue, that's a special circumstance. Wouldn't be a bad idea for IPB to be made aware of the concept though.

As for the conversion, you could try asking Mike Anime or CycleChat for help, as they are prior vB customers.

[Lee Craven]

Welcome and congrats on purchasing a new license.

To be honestly fair, the Beta isn't for any novice, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with no prior experience with IPB products unless they are comfortable editing code, finding bugs etc to report to the Bug Tracker. It's only really designed for people who are comfortable with 'Beta' products, did you try downloading the latest stable release? I think you will find it's pretty flawless.


IPS are great in the way that they allow us to use the Beta's and new builds etc live on their sites, just like this forum is 3.1.0 Beta 1 and once it's some what stable they allow customers to download and install the software on their own development web server (or live site as many people make the mistake of doing :P )

I'm not trying to negative, just want you to expect to have bugs and errors/issues with the Beta release. :)

[bfarber]

Thank you for the feedback. Some quick notes:

1) Regarding CHMOD - while 665 or 664 may work, in many scenarios, it does not work in all scenarios on all hosts. Since many of our customers have so many different setups, and 777 works across pretty much ALL setups (except some secure fcgi instances), it's easiest to just tell customers to use 777 for directories and files we need writable. For more advanced users, sure, feel free to lower the permissions as you see fit for your server.

2) Many hosts have problems with this too (specifically, when safe_mode is enabled).

...if you have suggestions on making the installation less "boring" let us know. ;) Maybe we could use an animated gif of a chicken running back and forth?

3) This is an open flagged bug, however fixing it is a bit more involved than just changing the regex unfortunately. As it only happens when run from a local Mac box (generally speaking), it doesn't affect too many users, and is being held until a future version. The main problem is that we have to update all the fields in the database that store IP addresses (to store the longer IPv6 versions) and we have wanted to avoid changes to the posts table for a while to prevent issues with larger forums upgrading. We will, however, bite the bullet at some point and make this change. I just can't promise when, yet.

4) Thank you for pointing out the broken link. If you ever find broken links like that, reply to the resource article containing the broken links to let us know. Mark has a script that looks through the comments, then he makes the fixes and removes the comments afterwards. It looks like, as of right now, the link has already been updated.

[Rigel_Kentaurus]

Thank you for the feedback. Some quick notes:

1) Regarding CHMOD - while 665 or 664 may work, in many scenarios, it does not work in all scenarios on all hosts. Since many of our customers have so many different setups, and 777 works across pretty much ALL setups (except some secure fcgi instances), it's easiest to just tell customers to use 777 for directories and files we need writable. For more advanced users, sure, feel free to lower the permissions as you see fit for your server.

2) Many hosts have problems with this too (specifically, when safe_mode is enabled).

...if you have suggestions on making the installation less "boring" let us know. ;) Maybe we could use an animated gif of a chicken running back and forth?

3) This is an open flagged bug, however fixing it is a bit more involved than just changing the regex unfortunately. As it only happens when run from a local Mac box (generally speaking), it doesn't affect too many users, and is being held until a future version. The main problem is that we have to update all the fields in the database that store IP addresses (to store the longer IPv6 versions) and we have wanted to avoid changes to the posts table for a while to prevent issues with larger forums upgrading. We will, however, bite the bullet at some point and make this change. I just can't promise when, yet.

4) Thank you for pointing out the broken link. If you ever find broken links like that, reply to the resource article containing the broken links to let us know. Mark has a script that looks through the comments, then he makes the fixes and removes the comments afterwards. It looks like, as of right now, the link has already been updated.

I thought there were good reasons for all of those. You are intelligent people, after all, so the obvious thing to think is that the chmod setup is like that for a reason :) I guess any admin that knows what they are doing can use any alternative methods they like (just as I did using 666).

I wanted to give you my feedback, as I am a completely new customer, and it might be useful to you. I am also really glad to be reading a reply. So far I am liking the experience, and all of the mini-problems were actually solvable by me in really short time. Of course I would wanted a flawless experience but this is software we are talking about and that is hardly possible.

Thanks for listening. I am looking forward to end my conversion and migrate to this forum solution. It is going to be a learning experience for me, and a lot of work since I have customized vBulletin way too much.

[Wolfie]

I thought there were good reasons for all of those. You are intelligent people, after all, so the obvious thing to think is that the chmod setup is like that for a reason :) I guess any admin that knows what they are doing can use any alternative methods they like (just as I did using 666).

You'll find that IPS will tend to bend some to try to keep people happy. Also, as you have learned, the instructions they provide are generic and more of a guide than concrete "do it this way or die" rules. They know that each situation will be different, so they have to rely on people knowing when to make changes to fit their needs.

[bfarber]

Keep in mind also, we provide free installation and upgrading services (we will do the installation or upgrade for you upon request), so anyone who does run into issues they cannot overcome or don't understand can fall back on us at no additional charge.

We even provide conversion services, for a small fee, where we'll do the conversion for you.

We try to cater to as many people as feasible.

[Rigel_Kentaurus]

Ahh.. more fun today.

Please, first of all, don't take any of these as complaints, or as problems with the software. I am certainly not complaining. And certainly I do not need help (I will ask for help if it comes to that) :) It is pure feedback.
This is more of a "Newbie IPB installation, journal and adventures"
(and next time somebody asks me "how easy is to convert from VB to IPB" I will say.. you can either pay 60 or.. *points to this thread*)

I started with the conversion from vb. Everything was ok until.. members

1) Members just gave me a "Database error". With the other software company I just viewed the source code, and as an admin, it showed me the offending query here. I had no such luck here. Bummer. That is one mod I am writing.

2) I tried searching for a "logs" folder. Nope. Then I found a logs section in the admin panel, I enabled logging everything, but still, I couldn't find where the sql errors were being logged to, as in System => Logs, I had nothing. Maybe they are sent by mail. I don't do sendmail in my local box.

3) I hacked my way through the PHP files, modified classDbMysqliClient to output the offending query, and I found

[bfarber]

I would definitely urge you to report these issues to the bug tracker.

As for database errors, if developer mode is enabled, they are displayed in the browser. For security reasons, however, we opt not to display database errors normally. Instead, a .cgi file will be written with "sql_(date).cgi" as the filename in the cache/ folder that contains the error. You can refer to that file in the future if you need to review a database error that has occurred. This isn't really clearly spelled out, however in the normal course of events we also don't expect a general user to experience a database error, or need to retrieve it themself. It's there for you to browse, however, if you need to.

The rest of the issues are likely things that simply haven't been encountered before. I'll point Mark to this thread, but if you encounter database errors trying to convert, your best bet is to make sure the converter developers know about them.

http://community.invisionpower.com/tracker/project-12-converters/

[Rigel_Kentaurus]

I would definitely urge you to report these issues to the bug tracker.

As for database errors, if developer mode is enabled, they are displayed in the browser. For security reasons, however, we opt not to display database errors normally. Instead, a .cgi file will be written with "sql_(date).cgi" as the filename in the cache/ folder that contains the error. You can refer to that file in the future if you need to review a database error that has occurred. This isn't really clearly spelled out, however in the normal course of events we also don't expect a general user to experience a database error, or need to retrieve it themself. It's there for you to browse, however, if you need to.

The rest of the issues are likely things that simply haven't been encountered before. I'll point Mark to this thread, but if you encounter database errors trying to convert, your best bet is to make sure the converter developers know about them.

http://community.invisionpower.com/tracker/project-12-converters/

Thanks for the link. I am still getting to know everything so I appreciate the help in finding my way around. I did not even know there was a bug tracker.

I will certainly report the importer errors, I am sure that can make the life easier for any future user that tries to do an import. I did not expect everything to work "out of the box" and there is always the possibility that my vBulletin installation is somehow not the typical one, so I am actually happy enough that I have a converter as a starting point.

[bfarber]

The vBulletin converter is relatively solid to be honest. We've had many people converting from vBulletin over the past few months, so that particular converter has been run through it's paces and most major issues that people have run into have already been resolved.

Just so happens that you've hit something that others haven't. The issue with the 'title' field for instance - while others may have had longer titles than the SQL column allows, you'd only get an SQL error with STRICT mode on (in other words, requires a certain configuration to get an error there). Thus, it's likely just nobody has run the converter with that particular configuration in the past, which is why the issue hadn't been reported to date. :) Simple fix, for sure.

[Clickfinity]

Thanks for the link. I am still getting to know everything so I appreciate the help in finding my way around. I did not even know there was a bug tracker.

I will certainly report the importer errors, I am sure that can make the life easier for any future user that tries to do an import. I did not expect everything to work "out of the box" and there is always the possibility that my vBulletin installation is somehow not the typical one, so I am actually happy enough that I have a converter as a starting point.

Hi from another vB converter (pending 3.1 stable ... :D),

I think a number of the issues you are having are because you've chosed to use the beta of 3.1 which is not really a stable product.

The converter also doesn't work with the 3.1 beta either and won't be modified until 3.1 is made final (which makes sense).

If you download and install IPB 3.0.5 and use the converter you should have far less trouble. I converted from vB3.8.4 to IPB 3.0.5 (1.2 million posts !!!) without any real issues (although it did take a while :D) :thumbsup:

It's good to hear your feedback though as it helps to hear about different customers experiences.

Have fun ...

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Rigel_Kentaurus]

Hi from another vB converter (pending 3.1 stable ... :D),

I think a number of the issues you are having are because you've chosed to use the beta of 3.1 which is not really a stable product.

The converter also doesn't work with the 3.1 beta either and won't be modified until 3.1 is made final (which makes sense).

If you download and install IPB 3.0.5 and use the converter you should have far less trouble. I converted from vB3.8.4 to IPB 3.0.5 (1.2 million posts !!!) without any real issues (although it did take a while :D) :thumbsup:

It's good to hear your feedback though as it helps to hear about different customers experiences.

Have fun ...

Cheers,

Shaun :D

Actually, the conversion I am doing is with the 3.0.5, not with the beta. I am planning to do a stable conversion first, then upgrade.
I started the conversion with the beta but when I got errors, I fell back to the stable version and that is the one I am converting to now. All the errors I mentioned were with 3.0.5

What bfarber says is right on the spot, I am running in most of these errors because I run mysql on strict mode. Actually, it is:

[mysqld]
sql_mode=TRADITIONAL,ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY

That is probably something I can change, but I don't want to. I would rather make the necessary modifications to have my complete titles imported :)

[bfarber]

Yes, that's fine. IPB should fully work with STRICT mode enabled - it's just that sometimes bugs crop up in certain configurations that aren't in other configurations. This is why I recommended posting it to the tracker, so that the converters team can make the necessary adjustments to prevent the errors from occurring at all.