3.4.7 to 4.4.1 Upgrade Error

[AtariAge]

Greetings, 

I am attempting to upgrade my 3.4.7 forum to 4.4.1 on a test server to make sure everything goes smoothly before I do this on the live server.  And before I actually do the migration, I have a ton of other work that needs to be done (hence, setting up a test server).  However, the upgrader is failing, and it's unclear if Invision will help me with the problem. I've been told that they don't normally support "test" environments, but there's absolutely no way in hell I'm going to upgrade my live forum until I can do a complete upgrade on the test server without errors.  I paid quite a bit to lease a new server (that I will ultimately be moving my entire site to), and I cannot do any work on the new forum until I get past this issue.  

Here's a screenshot of the error: 

Upon doing some searching, it looks to me to be some sort of UTF8-related issue.  It's not something I'm very familiar with (yet), so I'm hoping someone here might be able to shed some light on how I might go about fixing this.  I can provide more information as needed. 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[bfarber]

When you exported your database from one server and imported into the other, you most likely used a different character set along the way (i.e. your old server might have latin1 as the default while the new server might have utf8). Long story short - you will probably need to ensure the backup on your old server retained the character set encoding, and that the backup is imported correctly on the new server. At command line, you typically specify the character set with --default-character-set=X FWIW, but this is not the end-all-be-all answer I'm afraid.

(Character sets can be a pain)

[AtariAge]

So, after spending hours last night digging into what was taking place in the upgrader and finding the record in the database that was causing the problem, I ultimately discovered that I never added the $INFO['sql_utf8mb4']  = true; line to my conf_global.php file.  I see now that this was mentioned by the command-line UTF8 converter, and that I stupidly missed it.  I added that, and the converter was able to continue.  However, I erased the database, reimported the 3.4.7 database, and re-ran the UTF8 converter. 

When I went to restart the upgrade, it asked me to continue the upgrade and that I was on version 104002.  I saw mention on the forum to erase /uploads/logs/upgrader_data.cgi, which I did.  I then tried to run the upgrader again, and now it's telling me a ton of files are "not correct for the latest version". 

 

 

I haven't touched any of these files, so I don't know why I'm seeing this all of a sudden.. 

 ..Al

[AtariAge]

I erased the test forum directory, uploaded the 4.4.2 files, wiped the database, restored my 3.4.7 database, ran the UTF8 command-line converter, and then fired up the upgrader again.  Got further this time, until I hit this: 

Hit Retry, then got this:

Retry does not get beyond this error, though (and I'm not sure what it did when I hit Retry on the first one).  So, I'm stuck again.  Not having a very good go at this so far..  :(

 

 ..Al

[bfarber]

15 hours ago, AtariAge said:

I erased the test forum directory, uploaded the 4.4.2 files, wiped the database, restored my 3.4.7 database, ran the UTF8 command-line converter, and then fired up the upgrader again.  Got further this time, until I hit this: 

Hit Retry, then got this:

Retry does not get beyond this error, though (and I'm not sure what it did when I hit Retry on the first one).  So, I'm stuck again.  Not having a very good go at this so far..  😞

 

 ..Al

This is a see-saw bug we have been going back and forth on for some time because some versions of MySQL work differently than others. I told @Stuart Silvester next time this error came up I'd let him take it, since we've gone back and forth on a fix a few times 😛 

[Stuart Silvester]

@AtariAge You can go ahead and submit a ticket for my attention.

[AtariAge]

Thanks for your insight, that's interesting.  I am running MySQL 5.7.25 and PHP 7.2.16.  

I was told by support that ALL my original 3.4.7 files had to be on the server before I could do the upgrade, so I have just done that and am restoring my 3.4.7 database as well.  Since the above are obviously database errors, I am highly skeptical this will make a difference, and a bit peeved that I have to reset this upgrade yet again.  So, once I have the 3.4.7 forum running on my new server, I'll do the UTF8 conversion and then start the upgrade again.  The reason I didn't want to copy all the 3.4.7 source files is it's a bit of a mess since I've been running IP.Board for some 15 years, and was hoping to do a nice, clean upgrade of the forum using just the 4.4.2 source files and my database (I did also copy the Uploads directory).  

Trying to get this done as quickly as possible today since it's Friday and I'm afraid I may not get any help with this until Monday and I'd *really* like to be able to start work on the 4.4.2 this weekend if I can. 

 ..Al

2 minutes ago, Stuart Silvester said:

@AtariAge You can go ahead and submit a ticket for my attention.

Will do, thanks.

[Sonya*]

1 hour ago, AtariAge said:

The reason I didn't want to copy all the 3.4.7 source files is it's a bit of a mess since I've been running IP.Board for some 15 years, and was hoping to do a nice, clean upgrade of the forum using just the 4.4.2 source files and my database (I did also copy the Uploads directory).  

I have upgraded a large board from 3.4.6 to 4.3.6 in November last year. With almost all IPS components and some custom applications. I have indeed deleted all old files and left only the upload directory for the upgrade. There was no issue with it. This way I was sure I have no old unused files any more.

[AtariAge]

On 3/22/2019 at 11:03 AM, Sonya* said:

I have upgraded a large board from 3.4.6 to 4.3.6 in November last year. With almost all IPS components and some custom applications. I have indeed deleted all old files and left only the upload directory for the upgrade. There was no issue with it. This way I was sure I have no old unused files any more.

Thank you for the confirmation.  I have a bit more information about this now.  :)

[bfarber]

When I perform the upgrade from 3.x to 4.x I leave conf_global.php, the uploads/ folder, and the public/ directory. After the upgrade, I remove the public/ directory (if you have custom emoticons they may need to be moved during the upgrade).

Otherwise, you don't need to keep your old files in place.

[AtariAge]

4 hours ago, bfarber said:

When I perform the upgrade from 3.x to 4.x I leave conf_global.php, the uploads/ folder, and the public/ directory. After the upgrade, I remove the public/ directory (if you have custom emoticons they may need to be moved during the upgrade).

Otherwise, you don't need to keep your old files in place.

Thank you for confirmation, much appreciated.