Upgrading an 8 year old forum is painful.

[Deimos]

I tried "upgrading" to VB4 when it came out, just as a test and the process failed rather poorly back then, so I decided to try it again since the upgrade process has been slipstreamed or whatnot.

To say it hasn't gone well, would be an understatement, heh.

What I did:

1) Duplicated the live forum onto another domain
2) Copied all the uploaded avatars/attachments etc over
3) Uploaded VB 3.8.7, logged in, changed the details to the new domain, repointed the paths, uninstalled all plugins
4) Removed all 3.8 files, uploaded VB 4 files
5) Ran upgrade, recorded a video of the upgrade process, which you can see here -

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ncne5S4HY

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcvuhWz0DBM

End result:

First error was due to a mysql misconfiguration, the default collation type was set to latin1_general_si (or something), whereas, the existing tables were latin1_swedish_si.

Second error was:

Invalid SQL: UPDATE attachment SET filedataid = 0 WHERE filedataid IN ();
MySQL Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 1

So, I emptied the database, reimported the live one, moved all attachments/avatars/sigs into the database, from the file system, reran the upgrade process again.

Got a fair bit further this time (yay!), but again, another error, this time, it was:

Column 'keywordtext' cannot be part of FULLTEXT index.
Query:
ALTER TABLE searchcore_text (Blah blah)

So I removed the keywordtext entry from the Fulltext index entry (thankgod for Phpmyadmin)

Refreshed the page, it carried on.

Got to the part where it was processing XML files (Step 6 of 6), 99% of the way there..and it just sat there.
6 minutes or so went by, with no obvious activity, so another page refresh.
Process carried on, upgrading the blog, cms etc and then finished, yay

Went to the main page and, well, you can see the mess my test forum is in. :P

I had the exact same layout issue way back when I tried to upgrade to 4.0
Not sure what's interfering with the style, but I never did figure it out
The only way I could seem to get around it, was by emptying certain database tables like the template/styles tables.

[Shamil.]

I assume the style hasn't been upgraded?

In the admincp, set the style to default vBulletin.

[Deimos]

Well the style showing is the default VB4 one, all the others were disabled, heh.
Strange part is the footer, it has this...

Style designed by: c-pr0mpt of yaxay.com
Style released by Tech-Forums.net
Powered by: vBulletin Version
Copyright ©2000, 2001, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.
Copyright ©2000, 2002, Tech Forums.

Where on earth is it getting that from? I assume the upgrade process is somehow messing up on very, very old templates.

[Shamil.]

Well the style showing is the default VB4 one, all the others were disabled, heh.
Strange part is the footer, it has this...



Where on earth is it getting that from? I assume the upgrade process is somehow messing up on very, very old templates.

Hmm, it's looking for image files here:

/%7Bimagesfolder%7D/leftbanner.gif

That's definitly not the vB4 style. Uninstall all other styles, create a new one with no parent theme and try.

[melbo]

After Step 1, why didn't you perform the vB4 upgrade? I think steps 2, 3 and the first half of 4 could be causing you some problems.
My tests have always been Step 1 and then upgrade after removing all mods and reverting my style back to default.

[Jasper Aguila]

Have you tried this method when you disabled all plugins?
\

[Deimos]

After Step 1, why didn't you perform the vB4 upgrade? I think steps 2, 3 and the first half of 4 could be causing you some problems.
My tests have always been Step 1 and then upgrade after removing all mods and reverting my style back to default.

Because after the second error, I couldn't seem to get around it, I knew it was attachment related, but wasn't sure how to fix it
So I decided to start again from scratch.

[Deimos]

Have you tried this method when you disabled all plugins?
\

Hiya, nay, I just removed them all manually, instead of disabling them entirely.
From memory, the way I got around the problem the last time, was to empty the styles/templates tables and then run the upgrade, which I'm going to try today.
The problem with that of course, is I'd lose the custom styles I have, but such is life

That's definitly not the vB4 style. Uninstall all other styles, create a new one with no parent theme and try.

I know, it's odd eh? But that's the only enabled style, it's not a parent of another.

[Deimos]

Yea, it was template related

[Shamil.]

Good to see it

[Apolo]

"Column 'keywordtext' cannot be part of FULLTEXT index.
Query:
ALTER TABLE searchcore_text"

So I removed the keywordtext entry from the Fulltext index entry (thankgod for Phpmyadmin)

There is a another (and proper?) way around. Found this very handy tip:

Just to add to Thomas's good advice: And to sort things out in PHPMyAdmin you have to change the characterset for all columns AT THE SAME TIME.
Just wasted half a day trying again and again to change the columns one at a time and continually getting the error message about the FULLTEXT index.

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6...fulltext-index

So you just click/select the specific table, select the fields/rows you want to modify and then click on "change". Then you can set the COLLATION for all of them at the same time and click on SAVE.

That's it.