Upgrading from beta 6 to 9

SnakePromise

Hi!

I came upon a flarum installation I'd like to upgrade to beta 9. How do I do that from beta 6? Beta 7 instructions say to run "composer update" but won't that take me straight to beta 9? Should I try that?

(This installation is in a subfolder if that matters.)

jordanjay29

SnakePromise Well, this is one we haven't been asked before. Is this a site that has an active community or valid data that you need to keep on an updated Flarum installation? If it's an inactive or archival-only site, you may want to simply leave it as is.

You could certainly try to upgrade it, but I'd advise you to back up your forum before you start. Keep your composer.json, composer.lock, config.php, the entire assets folder and your entire database in a safe place.

I recommend both disabling and completely removing all extensions you have installed now (after your backup). Keep a list of what you had installed, and understand that some of those extensions may no longer be compatible with Flarum beta 9 or there may be a different extension that does something similar.

The best way to go about this would probably be to start a fresh Flarum install of Beta 9 following our standard instructions. Install it in a clean directory and database.

Then import your Beta 6 database into the new Beta 9 site's database.

Then run php flarum migrate in the new install's root folder.

Then run php flarum cache:clear in the same place.

If this doesn't work, you can revert to your backup version.

SnakePromise

Thanks! It's an active community, just left behind technologically a bit. I'll try upgrading in the way you described.

Which directories from storage/ and assets/ should I copy over manually?

jordanjay29

SnakePromise Make sure you're keeping backup copies in a different place during this upgrade, btw.

You shouldn't need anything from the storage folder unless you had extensions that stored things there, which is unlikely.

In the asset folder, you'll definitely want to transfer over the avatars folder, and any other user-uploaded files (from Flagrow Upload if you have it). If you have a backup in another place, it will help you resolve any loss of files that occur if you didn't transfer the right ones the first time.

I'd definitely advise you don't do this live the first time, try it in a different place to ensure it works first.

SnakePromise

Of course I'm testing this out on copies! 😀

You suggested "Then import your Beta 6 database into the new Beta 9 site's database", how would I do that, since it seems that database structure has changed quite a bit.

For example access_tokens previously was (id, user_id, last_activity, lifetime), now (token, user_id, last_activity_at, lifetime_seconds, created_at).

Should I manually rename the fields in the beta 6 exported sql file and then imoport into beta 9 db?

Of should I delete all beta 9 tables, import beta 6 tables and then run php flarum migrate?

jordanjay29

SnakePromise The last method. Flarum's migrations should all run in order, so it should change what's needed as it goes, but there may be hiccups because it was never intended to update through 3 different versions and so this hasn't been tested.

People have also run into issues if they use table prefixes, so you may wish to manually remove those if you use them to avoid problems. Table prefixes are not recommended anyway if you use a different database for Flarum than any other product.

jordanjay29

jordanjay29 but there may be hiccups because it was never intended to update through 3 different versions and so this hasn't been tested.

This is kind of what I expected. I'm not really surprised about encountering problems here.

I need to leave for now, but I can try to take a look at it again tonight or tomorrow morning if someone else doesn't get here first.

SnakePromise

Having problems with migrate ☹️

Migrating Flarum...
Migrated: 2017_04_07_114138_add_is_private_to_discussions
Migrated: 2017_04_07_114138_add_is_private_to_posts
Migrated: 2018_01_11_093900_change_access_tokens_columns

In Connection.php line 664:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1215 Cannot add foreign key constraint (SQL: alter table access_tokens add constraint access_tokens_user_id_foreign foreign key (user_id) reference s users (id) on delete cascade)

In PDOStatement.php line 119:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1215 Cannot add foreign key constraint

In PDOStatement.php line 117:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1215 Cannot add foreign key constraint

migrate

datitisev

SnakePromise You might be able to update to beta 9 directly, however, you'll have to perform the upgrade instructions from beta 8 (found @ https://discuss.flarum.org/d/17745-flarum-0-1-0-beta-8-released), which will require changing some directory structures.

Try that instead of importing, and if it doesn't work, do let us know. Make sure to uninstall (yes, uninstall, with composer remove) all third party extensions first though, as they may block upgrading core and/or extensions.

luceos

SnakePromise this issue is easy to solve by truncating the access tokens table before migrating.

SnakePromise

Where are these files (Connection.php, PDOStatement.php) located so I can read them and try to execute sql manually?

SnakePromise

datitisev Make sure to uninstall (yes, uninstall, with composer remove) all third party extensions first though, as they may block upgrading core and/or extensions

How do I distinguish 3rd party from 1st party extensions? 🙂

SnakePromise

OK, I'll try that as well. Although since this site is run from a subfolder, no directory structure needs to be changed (no public directory is used)? (Or should I change it, upgrade and then change it back?)

Frink

SnakePromise extensions that didn't come preinstalled with Flarum are third-party extensions. It looks like you have Flagrow Byobu and Flagrow Upload, those are the only two I can see that should need disabled.

SnakePromise

Frink Thanks!

(Since I didn't install it, I didn't know which extensions were added. Maybe 3rd party extensions should be in a separate section to make it more clear? Maybe they already are in the latest beta, I didn't check. 🙂)

SnakePromise

luceos I truncated the table and tried migrate command again, nothing changed, the same errors.

luceos

What is your MySQL version?

SnakePromise

luceos 5.7.27

SnakePromise

Hi!

I tried the upgrade again and succeeded, from beta 6 to 13 in one go. 🙂 (Migrated database without errors, moved old assets to new locations.)

The site almost works, I can view the discussions etc, bet when I log in, I get blank white page with the following text:

"An error occurred while trying to load this page."

If I enable debugging in config.php, I see an error:
InvalidArgumentException thrown with message "Cannot load XML: Extra content at the end of the document

However I can view https://mysite.com/admin without any problems.

flarum info output:

Flarum core 0.1.0-beta.13
PHP version: 7.3.19-1~deb10u1
Loaded extensions: Core, date, libxml, openssl, pcre, zlib, filter, hash, pcntl, 
Reflection, SPL, session, sodium, standard, mysqlnd, PDO, xml, calendar, ctype, 
curl, dom, mbstring, fileinfo, ftp, gd, gettext, iconv, json, exif, mysqli, pdo_mysql, 
Phar, posix, readline, shmop, SimpleXML, sockets, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, 
tokenizer, wddx, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, Zend OPcache
+----------------------+----------------+--------+
| Flarum Extensions    |                |        |
+----------------------+----------------+--------+
| ID                   | Version        | Commit |
+----------------------+----------------+--------+
| flarum-bbcode        | v0.1.0-beta.12 |        |
| flarum-emoji         | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-flags         | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-likes         | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-markdown      | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-mentions      | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-sticky        | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-subscriptions | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-suspend       | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-tags          | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-approval      | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-auth-facebook | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-lock          | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| flarum-lang-english  | v0.1.0-beta.13 |        |
| fof-byobu            | 0.5.6          |        |
| fof-upload           | 0.9.2          |        |
+----------------------+----------------+--------+

Any ideas how should I troubleshoot that? I cleared cache several times without any result. Apache error log doesn't show any errors.

luceos

SnakePromise try running php flarum cache:clear, otherwise check storage/logs/flarum.log for a more precise error.