Washerhelp

Thanks Mark. I appreciate it's potentially complicated to try and "catch" failures, and probably impractical to try and undo changes once the upgrade process has started if it fails. I knew that the upgrade file had not run because it hung on the download and extract section, and never got to "installing". My problem was that the upgrade process puts a forum into maintenance mode pretty early on in the process, before its really started the actual upgrade. So this resulted in my forum being stuck in maintenance mode, when no changes had started. I was hoping you'd be able to provide an easy method to take a website out of maintenance mode. I know this happened several years ago but of course there have been many changes to Invision forum since then so maybe things are different now.

Hi Marc. You are missing the point that the upgrade never started. It hung on download and extract. There was nothing to restore because I knew that nothing had been changed. The upgrade file never ran. I only restored my files after deleting all previous files because I needed to get rid of the file that was taking my site offline and showing users the site was bej g upgraded. What I wanted to know is which files are telling the system that an upgrade is in process so I would just need to delete them. This happened several years ago and tech support said I just needed to delete the upgrade file and that did the trick.

Thanks Marc. I did delete every file and restored them all. But the site still showed it was updating. Do you agree that it's not ideal for users to be confronted with a failed update and have their site go offline with no obvious way to restore it? Anyone experiencing this would have a lot of stress whilst they try to find out what to do, which is all manual downloading and running things manually. Would it be possible to have an option to abort, clean up and put things back when an update has not run at all? Also, it would be extremely useful if the update process could give error reports? I just found the following in error logs Error: Failed opening required '/home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/admin/upgrade/upgrading.html' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php81/pear') (0) #0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/system/Dispatcher/Dispatcher.php(110): IPS\Dispatcher\_Front->init() #1 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/index.php(13): IPS\_Dispatcher::i() #2 {main} ....public_html/forums/init.php(1029): IPS\_Log::log('Error: Failed o...', 'uncaught_except...') #1 [internal function]: IPS\IPS::exceptionHandler(Object(Error)) #2 {main}

Sorry for multiple posts, but as you can imagine it's pretty urgent when site goes offline. I just tried logging back into control panel and got a message that an upgrade was already in progress and it would have to complete before I could access dashboard. I click the button to complete upgrade, but it failed. However, whatever it did got my forums back online. I now have things back to normal with the message in control panel that Version 4.7.3 upgrade is needed. However, I clearly am not going to try that again. Can someone please tell me (and others) how to recover from a failed update? This has happened to me before a few years ago, and I remember tech support told me to find the update files and delete them, but I can't remember where they are? Also, can you please build in a way to abort a failed update? There is no cancel button. If an update fails or hangs, we need to be able to tell it to abort the update, clean up the update files, and remove the "sorry this forum is being updated" message. Currently, any update that fails, for whatever reason - leaves forums offline.

I've completely deleted everything in my forums folder. And restored all the files from a backup - but forums are still offline, showing update in progress. I don't know how that's even possible? I've checked on different devices, so it's not my browser cache. How do I get off of the update in progress page urgently please?

Latest upgrade hung at download and unpack. My forums are showing "Update in progress". A full restore didn't bring them back. If I remember right there are some files installed somewhere for the failed update that need deleting but I can't find them?

I thought do, it's just someone earlier said it wouldn't. Maybe I misunderstood. Anyway many thanks.

Many thanks Mark, can you or anyone confirm what would happen if the Cron jobs didn't work? The implications of what's been said is that you wouldnt get any notification. I would say mine should be working because when I pasted I. The exact syntax that Invision quoted it generated those strange Cron emails and stopped when I edited it. I also accidentally made an error and got a Cron email saying it couldn't find the file.

So could the emails I got every minutewhuxh I quoted a few replied back actually be a result if the Cron jobs actually working and they were never working before? Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, max-age=0, s-maxage=0 Expires: 0 Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Thanks for the information. I have a memory of being notified of a load of Cron tasks that hadn't been carried out although I could be getting mixed up with WordPress. I definitely remember Invision telling me my forum was in danger because it was not being visited enough to trigger all the regular tasks. That's when I originally set up the Cron task. So if the Cron job doesn't work. What happens?

Hi. That's not what I meant. I meant when you get a message on dashboard or by email saying you should change to PHP8, there's no mention that if you do, you need to also manually update the Cron syntax on your server.

I did consider that, but it's now stopped those emails, and I've never had them before. I have to assume (again) that if the Cron job was not working, I would get notifications from Invision board about them, which I've had before. However, I don't know how long overdue they would need to be before triggering notifications. The Cron is set to run every minute.

Thanks Dexter, However, I did that and Cron started producing multiple emails saying - I assumed these were errors? My Cron script instructions said - Assuming the new emails every minute were errors, I presumed the first bit "/usr/local/php81/bin/php " was incorrect. So I changed the first bit to - php81 -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132 Hopefully everything is OK now and I haven't assumed and presumed erroneously 🙂

I got in touch with my hosting tech support as suggested. I had no idea that when you set your website to run on PHP 8 that the Cron jobs don't change and have to be told to use PHP 8 "manually". This seems crazy, but if it is the case, it would be great if Invision told us this when advising us to change to PHP 8? If this information is made clear, then my bad - and please accept apologies 🙂 They changed the Cron from - php -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132 To php80 -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132 Hopefully that will wok OK. But 2 queries arose from the investigation. First, the permissions on task.php are set at 777? (not me) and second, what is the strange set of numbers and letters at the end of the Cron syntax and does it need deleting cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132 ? I got the syntax initially from somewhere at Invision

I will do Marc, was assuming my server is running on php 8, which is set in my hosting company dashboard and didn't realise Cron jobs weren't run from my actual website. Hence my puzzlement. I'll check with them.

Hi Marc, maybe I was being stupid for assuming if my server is running PHP 8 then, it's running on PHP 8? 🙂

Hi Marc, are you saying that despite my server running on PHP 8.1.10 somehow the cron jobs are not?

Hi. I've got the same thing despite being on php 8. I can see the potential explanation above, but how do I fix it? I have the following cron job on my server, I've had a look at the task.php file. I can't see any reference to php 7 anywhere. php -d memory_limit=-1 -d max_execution_time=0 /home/customer/www/washerhelp.co.uk/public_html/forums/applications/core/interface/task/task.php cd0e5a90ec46904f51980f7f8bd36132

I updated to 4.7.2 a couple of hours ago. So far I've had no more emails. I'm on PHP Version 8.1.10

Hi Jim. It's not happening specifically in my community, there several people with the same issue, plus presumably others who have not actually complained about maybe just turned of notifications. I would just like to know a little bit more about what you suspect it could be? There must be several things that you would immediately check if you had full access to my dashboard. If you were to post them I could check myself, and so could anyone else with the same problem saving you time and trouble later having to do it for everyone. If there aren't any things that I can check myself, it would imply that there isn't anything that is suspected, and maybe it is something very strange that instead requires someone to rummage through everything and see if they can spot anything? Nothing has changed on my forums, it's all standard installation with the latest updates. Have you developed any suspicions as to what could possibly account for the emails to be suddenly gone off piste so to speak?

Just had another one 14 minutes later. I will need to turn off the notifications in my control panel again to stop them. However, it is frustrating that something like this would suddenly start to happen, and with no explanation.

Hi there. Is there nothing I can check myself? I very much appreciate that getting access to people's dashboard is a much more preferable way of dealing with things for you guys, but I've had a lot of poor and bad experience with people accessing my backend :-) including someone replacing my htaccess file with a bog standard basic one and deleting over 40 of my redirects and various other customisations. There are other incidents that I won't bore you with too. I hasten to add that this was not you guys. But I just prefer not to let people have a direct look until at least the basics have been checked. As reported last week, I had disabled the, "Invision Community License expires or will expire soon" notification in my dashboard. I have just tried re-enabling it, and received 2 more, "Your Invision Community License" expiry notifications within less than a minute. Just to confirm, my licence does not expire while 22 November. Plus, I have run Invision forums for over 10 years, and to my recollection they never send me these emails because it just gets automatically paid by direct debit.

Thanks. Aren't these emails sent from invision though? I can't think why my own forum would be sending them.

I've had to turn off notifications in my control panel, which has stopped them.

It appears to be official notices from client area from a noreply address Your Invision Community license expires soon!An active license opens up access to many more services and offerings, including our Spam Defense service, and technical support and updates.