Tutorial for making a test install?

[galenb]

18 minutes ago, Martin A. said:

He means the /home/xxxxtest/test.xxxx.com/forums/datastore folder. This holds cached data which can mess things up. Emptying this does not cause permanent data loss.

Thank you!

 

[galenb]

Hello again everyone. I took some time away to do "real life things" and just got back to this. I was thinking dangerous thoughts out of desperation and decided to look away for a while. Came back sat down and started reading through all the posts again and re-checking. Set everything to only test.domain.com (no www) and still no good. Finally came across the post way back in the thread to edit the conf_global.php file and found a reference to https://www.test.domain.com/forums... changed that and finally had the site come up.... have some reference to The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at http://www.domain.com  so I need to find those...

Well I may be back soon but this thread has been very helpful and I appreciate the tolerance of the newbie.

I did go through a lot of PHP code and refreshed a lot of old memories from 15 years or more ago too. 

Thanks again everyone!!!

[Randy Calvert]

After editing your conf_global.php, did you rebuild your theme files by going to ACP and clicking "Clear System Caches"?

[galenb]

8 hours ago, Randy Calvert said:

After editing your conf_global.php, did you rebuild your theme files by going to ACP and clicking "Clear System Caches"?

I have now... and it's all working... but I did it by accident. Can you direct me to where this located in the admincp?

 

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by galenb

[Marc Stridgen]

Click on support in the top right of your admin CP

[galenb]

11 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Click on support in the top right of your admin CP

I click on Support at the top right and I get the page below. That's how I accidentally updated the caches ... by selecting the "Something isn't working correctly" and clicking continue.

 

Then I get this page... not a "Tools & Diagnostics" menu...

This is kinda where I am now but was kinda looking for that cool "T&D" menu in case i need it in the future.

Previously when I was on my primary site I clicked on the "Fix This" button for the db and it aborted somewhere and trashed the primary site database. So I restored the db on the primary and started down the path of building a test site. Here on the Test site I clicked the "Fix This" button and got the same prompt...

This time... I have copied and pasted all the sql to a file and will look at each piece and run them separately to see where it blows up.

As I work through each of these steps I find the little hurdles of being ignorant of UNIX, MySql and how to access and build things. (I'm actually fairly decent at SQL but more used to Oracle and SQL Server, but not DBA level decent).

 

So right now my hurdles are:

1. (1) Terminal access to my server. Right now I just have WinSCP and the internal terminal errors out on the server.  So... Gotta learn how to do that in order that I can..
2. (2) learn what .htaccess and .htpasswd should be and edit them in order to be IVP license compliant so there is no "outside" access to the test site.

(I want to get this right so I can keep the test site up and running. There was a test site before I turned this over to other people 3 or so years ago and I think one of the people doing admin got a notice that it wasn't compliant and just removed it.)

Oh... and I have to paint my garage door trim today too. 🙂

 

 

 

 

[Nathan Explosion]

5 minutes ago, galenb said:

This is kinda where I am now but was kinda looking for that cool "T&D" menu in case i need it in the future.

You'll need to update to that later version that is being indicated then (which is where I guess you are heading anyway)

Edited April 20, 2023 by Nathan Explosion

[galenb]

Just now, Nathan Explosion said:

You'll need to update to that later version that is being indicated then.

I kinda was thinking that it was something new... Can't wait to get there.

 

[galenb]

Just kinda keeping a log in this thread.

1. I did the best I could getting a test system up and running on my host. It looks just like the primary when it comes up.
2.  I downloaded MySql for Windows and loaded a copy of the DB on my test system into the local DB.
3.  I took the script that the auto upgrade produced and executed every set of SQL statements for each table. There were most 3 types of changes.
   1. Updating integer fields that were set as NULL to 0's
   2. Changing PK's to Auto-Increment but my DB is so old there were no PK's defined so I had to add the PK for each of these changes.
   3. The script was trying to modify some tables and in order to do so it had a "drop index" where no index existed in my tables.
4. An update to one table ibf_core_statistics actually killed the database... I did it three times. It looks like data that's only necessary if I was interested in knowing how many people hit what everyday but I'm not sure. Anyone know what it would do if I just truncated that table?

I'll spend a little more time analyzing and then start updating my test system with each table query.

🙏

[Marc Stridgen]

Honestly not sure what it is you are doing there, but you shouldnt be taking a script from the auto upgrader to upgrade. You should be uploading files and running the upgrade from /admin/upgrade if needed

[galenb]

11 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Honestly not sure what it is you are doing there, but you shouldnt be taking a script from the auto upgrader to upgrade. You should be uploading files and running the upgrade from /admin/upgrade if needed

Ok... well that's where I'm at now. Have to go read again about where to get the files and executing it.

[galenb]

(1) I confirmed that my test installation was operational. (using PHP 7.4)

(2) Switched to PHP 8.x and my test installation now longer operates.

(3) Downloaded and executed IPS4.php

 

(4) Downloaded the latest upgrade package (4.7.9) unziped and uploaded to my test installation.

(5) When I try to execute the upgrade. It doesn't do anything. I moved a phpinfo.php file into the /admin/upgrade/ directory and it executes ok and gives me the php info page. I can only think there is some permissions situation that is  stopping me from executing beyond the "upgrade" directory or something.

 

(6) So I've been trying to open a ticket but can't figure out how. Willing to pay for some support to this site up to date before things go to 5.x.

 

 

[teraßyte]

6 hours ago, galenb said:

(2) Switched to PHP 8.x and my test installation now longer operates.

What happens exactly? Are you getting a 500 error, perhaps? Or something else? Your server logs will probably have more detailed info about the issue.

Edited April 26, 2023 by teraßyte

[Marc Stridgen]

As you have a white page entirely there, you need to check your server error logs as mentioned above. 

With regard support, you are in support here.

[galenb]

8 hours ago, teraßyte said:

What happens exactly? Are you getting a 500 error, perhaps? Or something else? Your server logs will probably have more detailed info about the issue.

Yes, thanks for the reminder to check the debugger Network traffic, so looks like a 500 error

[galenb]

2 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

As you have a white page entirely there, you need to check your server error logs as mentioned above. 

With regard support, you are in support here.

I'm going to learn how to do that now. I have some "real life" stuff to do today so just off and on work today on this. I appreciate you sticking with me. Thanks.

 

[galenb]

Found the server logs and poured over those for a while... determined that I did not have a "conf_global.php" in the test.domain.com directory. So I copied the one from test.domain.com/forums and double checked the settings (at least the ones I knew like the db name and pword etc.) and I finally got the menu for the update to come up.

 

I waited for a while and I got another page saying the update was complete and asking me to select going to the "suite" or "admincp". I selected "suite" and the next page url was test.domain.com/forums but it was blank again. 

I checked the DB and it seems to be up and running fine. I can attach the server and the schema looks to be there.

Ran an Ips4.php file from test.domain.com and test.domain.com/forums (I put it there just make sure php would work) I get the following result

 

So checking the access.log file. 

Hitting the url https://test.domain.com/forums results in the following entry (x.xx.xxx.xxx is my ip address)

x.xx.xxx.xxx - - [26/Apr/2023:10:59:40 -0700] "GET /forums/ HTTP/2.0" 500 110 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0"

Hitting the url https://test.domain.com/forums/index.php

x.xx.xxx.xxx - - [26/Apr/2023:11:00:24 -0700] "GET /forums/index.php HTTP/2.0" 500 110 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0"

I'm checking all the logs available... with no additional info. The error.log.0 is where I found the conf_global.php errors but there is nothing new in the error.log or error.log.0

 

 

I'm assuming there that php is throwing an error somewhere due to permissions or some setup I've failed to perform correctly. Nothing in the error.log though and I don't have access to php logs, I don't think... but I'll go look. The test site was up and running under the old code and php_7.4 so it might be related to something in php_8.1 and how I have things set up (What I'm saying is... I doubt the code is bad, it gotta be in the setup somewhere). I'll go mow the lawn and think about it.

 

[galenb]

This is the only other thing I have found when running under the debugger...

[galenb]

Oddly ... I'm getting the same error in the debugger on the primary site that is running IVS Board 4.4.7 and php 7.4 but execution does not stop.

 

 

[galenb]

Well now I think this Javascript error is kind of a red herring. I have also determined that the test.domain.com/forums/index.php is getting called (I put an echo "hello" in the code and it rendered.) What ever happens after that (calling some sort of "Dispatcher") isn't doing what's expected. I'm totally lost at this point. I don't know what the next step should be. The Firefox debugger shows an empty HTML page being produced.

 

[teraßyte]

I tried visiting the url in your screenshot, and I got get the 500 error you mentioned. If that error_log.0 mentioned above is empty, the error is probably being saved somewhere else. Or maybe the error logging option is disabled at the server level. 🤔

[galenb]

9 hours ago, teraßyte said:

I tried visiting the url in your screenshot, and I got get the 500 error you mentioned. If that error_log.0 mentioned above is empty, the error is probably being saved somewhere else. Or maybe the error logging option is disabled at the server level. 🤔

Dang it... missed one.

 

I got real life stuff to do today. If I don't get a response today... then I guess my next step is to "clear out" the test site and database and try just a clean install.

[galenb]

This morning I poked around and found nothing... so I decided to run the upgrade again. Didn't know what to expect. Got a nice formatted page that said "there is nothing to upgrade" I dismissed the page and then thought... well I should probably post that, so I immeadiately ran it again. Now I get a blank page. So maybe some caching thing or something. Don't know.

 

[galenb]

So after going through all the logs and checking everything I could I decided to delete the TESTINSTALL website and try a fresh install. Now I have the, what appears to be, almost expected "A test installation has already been activated for this...."

I am installing to the same directory. Reading several posts leads me to believe that it has something to do with www vs. no www or  http vs https or some other nuance. Sure could use some help with this. I see that usually someone has to reset something. I'm just trying to get to a point where I can have a hope of updating the primary site without it being down for days by using a test site first.

[teraßyte]

It's not working because the URL is not the same as before. In the previous screenshot, you were using the /forums/ folder, but not in your latest screenshot.

The check requires the same exact URL, not just (sub)domain.