Advice Sought, rebuilding an old Vbulletin 4.2.5 on a local test rig

[Old Git]

Hi Guys,

looking for a bit of steer on a few items before I start down this route. The ultimate aim is to get this site rebuilt with a view to porting it to a VB5 Install.

This forum was taken off-line in 2019 and was running on VB 4.2.5 at that time. According to the SQL dump the SQL server version was 10.2.27-MariaDB. No idea on the PHP version as yet but I'm assuming probably first iterations of 7x. The forum was run on a Linux box with Apache and a fully qualified domain name.

I first intend to set it up on a test rig built on an old Win 7 Ultimate PC running IIS 7.5. Questions are as follows

1.) Will I need to use the same SQL server, i.e. 10.2.27-MariaDB or can I just restore the SQL dump to a suitable Windows MYSQL, if so what would be the most compatible version for 10.2.27-MariaDB?

2.) I presume PHP version will have little impact as long as it works OK with VB 4.2.5? Open to any suggestions here?

3.) The plan is to install a clean copy of VB 4.2.5 with the same Config file, suitably modded to reflect IP address of local PC, and then restore the SQL dump. However, I know from past and distant experience that when I restore the SQL Dump it will obviously point everything to the original Domain name that the site was on, whereas now it'll be hosted on a local PC with a local IP address. Common sense tells me that this means I won't be able to login to AdminCP and will have to edit the code directly to change this setting. Can someone remind me which files I will have to edit to do this?

Any other advice, caveats, that anyone can think of before I plunge in to this would be most welcome.

Thanks in Advance

Pete

[Old Git]

OK, so doing a bit of digging around and have found a couple of ideas re the change of forum URL. I've tried htaccess to redirect but it doesn't seem to be working. So next port of call would be to edit the database directly. I've found a post suggesting that the following is the way to do this...

This should work for the BBURL:

UPDATE `yourprefix_setting` SET `value`='insert the address for the bb url here' WHERE `varname`='bburl'


And this should work for the forum URL:

Code:
UPDATE `yourprefix_setting` SET `value`='insert the address for the forum url here' WHERE `varname`='homeurl'

Can someone tell me what is meant by 'yourprefix setting' is that the standard cookie prefix as specified in Config.php, i.e. BB_?

[Trevor Hannant]

Prefix is the table prefix. So if your setting table is just showing as "setting" in phpMyAdmin, then you delete "yourprefix_" from that query.

If your tables have something in front of the table name, for example, "vb_setting", then you replace "yourprefix_" with "vb_" so the query becomes:

UPDATE `vb_setting` SET `value`='insert the address for the bb url here' WHERE `varname`='bburl'

[Old Git]

Hi Trevor, thanks for the reply buddy. I've just downloaded and install PhpMyAdmin. I've never used this before and, in truth, I setup the original server 10 years ago, just as VB4x came to market. As far as I remember I just went with the defaults in terms of installations and more of my time was spent trying to edit templates to get a light colour scheme working and trying to figure out how best to use the CMS function. So, unless VB used table prefixes then I can see no reason why there should be any in the database. A quick look over the tables I can see in PHPMyAdmin would seem to confirm that.

So, absent any table prefixes can I assume that all I need to do is type the following two queries at the SQL Command Prompt on the server? As you might have guessed, I'm no SQL expert so baby step it for me if you can, please.

Code:
UPDATE SET `value`='192.168.0.6\vb4forum' WHERE `varname`='bburl'

And this should work for the forum URL:

Code:
UPDATE SET `value`='192.168.0.6\vb4forum' WHERE `varname`='homeurl'

[Wayne Luke]

You should include the http or https in the URL and use slashes, not back slashes, otherwise things won't work well... http://192.168.0.6/vb4forum

Otherwise the structure of the queries are correct.

Prefixes can be defined in your /includes/config.php file. The above should change the options. However the URLs are cached in the datastore as well so you'll need to delete the options row from that table if you manually update the URL.

Since this is vBulletin 4.X, you should be able to simply to go to the AdminCP and change the URLs within the Settings. At least in most cases. This wouldn't work if you had changed the cookie domain and cookie path in the past. This was frequently done in vBulletin 4 even though 99% of all sites never needed these values changed.

[Old Git]

EDIT: Hi Wayne, thanks for your reply earlier. I kinda missed it at first, hence the edit.


OK, so being an SQL noob, and never having used PHPMyAdmin before, I finally figured out that I could use it to edit the Forum URL and BB URL in the SQL Database to point them to the new IP address. However, having fixed the URL problem I find that I still cannot login to AdminCP and get the following error:

500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

Also, all the labels in Vbtab are are bit screwy..

[Old Git]

In addition to the my last post, it should be noted that having made the correct edit to the Forum and BB URL's (as per Wayne's note) I then used Tools.php to update both the Options Cache and the Bitfields cache. Whilst that resolved the overall appearance of main forum page it still hasn't let me login (as per the post immediately above).

Cookie Domain is currently blank and Cookie path is set to /. I presume that these are standard as I have no recollection of these being modified during lifetime of the forum.

I'm also beginning to suspect that there was Mod added to the forum for the Navbar. Can't remember what it was though!

Anyone got any suggestions re the Login issues?

[Wayne Luke]

Look in your PHP error log and your httpd access log to see what the cause of the 500 server error is. The location of these files will be defined in your configuration for PHP and your Web Server.

Since this is vBulletin 4.2.5, you cannot use any version of PHP higher than 7.1.33 or lower than 5.6.0.

[Old Git]

Thanks Wayne, stared at the Syslogs for ages & seen nothing wrong until I hit my doh moment ... a simple case of lower case vb4forum in the string vs upper case VB4Forum.on the directory name on HDD. I Could have kicked myself when I finally did spot it. I used to be better than this but I guess that's what happens when we retire, we forget more than we ever learned!

Still seeing issues with the NavBar and WGO areas, but I feel this may be a PHP problem Site is currently running on PHP 5.6.0 and MySQL 5.6.10 and using a restored dump from a 5.6.10 Server. Now that I'm logged in I intend to upgrade PHP to 7.0 and MySQL to MariaDB 10.2.27, which I think is about where the server was when the last SQL Dump was made in 2019. All being well I should be on the home stretch now! Wow, digging all this out of my head after 10 years has been hard work!

[Wayne Luke]

The problem with the text in your images above are from the lack of phrase text for those phrases. Normally, these are stored in the database but if they rely on an addon, they might be stored elsewhere.

[Old Git]

Thanks Wayne, I've resolved the issue with the NavTab by upgrading to MySQL 5.7.10. Now everything on the forum pages looks as it supposed to. However, I have a problem under MySQL 5.7.10 that I didn't have under 5.6.10.

When I click on a sub forum I get a blank page. When I click on the visible thread to the right of the forum name I get the error:

No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator`

This is true for all sub-forums and all threads. There's nothing obvious jumping out at me from the syslog and I've disable all plugins.

I had thought it might be an issue with the restored SQL dump coming from a MariaDB 10.2.27 database so I upgraded MySQL to Maria DB 10.2.27 and still the same problem. I can't decide if it's a PHP problem or a database problem. I think I'll upgrade PHO to 7.1.33 and see if that makes a difference, it is on 5.6.0 at present.

Before I go ahead and do this, later this evening, any ideas of what might be causing the problem?

[Wayne Luke]

Go to Maintenance -> General Update Tools. Run the Thread Information and Forum Information tools followed by Rebuild Search Index.

[Old Git]

Thanks for that Wayne, sadly it has not solved the problem and now all the sub-forums visible on the front page now show 'Never' under the 'Last Post' entry. and WGO now reads Zero posts and Zero Threads. Looks like I shall have to re-import the SQL dump.