A Glance at Test Conversion of the Murga Forum

[rockedge]

On a experimental development server, I have successfully converted the J.Murga Forum to the latest version of phpBB.

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[rockedge]

Some of the true statistics for the John Murga Forum ->

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(attachments read 0 because they are not on the test platform)

and by the way, this web server is running on Puppy Linux Bionic64-8.0......and I could use a Logo for this test forum, 100 x 100 pixels.....................

[BarryK]

That's great!

Are the attachments in a separate folder on the original site?
So then it would be just a matter of copying that folder to the new site?

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Hm. In-ter-esting......

So; what's the plan?

Move everybody back to the old forum?
Transfer everything from the old forum to this one?
Merge the two?
Keep the old Forum as an archive?

It's good that the conversion was successful, but beware re-enabling it as a working forum again. Remember what I said the other day about "fragmentation"... Humans (AND puppies!) are creatures of habit; it's inevitable that some of our older members will gravitate back to the old Forum (the more so if it'll now have the new features). Many of the members we've "lost" will surface and just carry on with the old forum like nothing's happened. Many will choose to remain here. You'll have tons of quite possibly related and/or duplicated threads running concurrently on two forums in parallel..... I can see it turning into an administrative nightmare.

Certainly it'll need to reflect the community's wishes, but it must reflect what the majority want to do. You'll never please all of the folk all of the time.....but it's got to encompass what's best for the community as a whole. And fragmentation we do NOT need.

Mike.

[bigpup]

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[puddlemoon]

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[rockedge]

Are the attachments in a separate folder on the original site?
So then it would be just a matter of copying that folder to the new site?

Yes! One folder for the attachments, one for the avatars and we would need to add in any extension modules that the original had, if any. Though that could prove problematic since the modules also need to run on v3.3.3. Also language packs if there were any. But that is just a matter of adding in the packages.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh It will remain read only as an archive and library. Advantage is like a well kept museum ship, it can still sail under it's own power. That with the most modern code base available we can set it to read only and not have the confusion.

It is not practical at all to merge the 2 and probably not possible. Different design and layout. Different extensions and language packs.

The real reason is the original murga forum runs on PHP 5+ and that is depreciated and being left further and further behind and now it can run into the future and beyond!

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Thanks for the clarification!

Mike.

EDIT:- There's always this ( ) :-

[Grey]

Since people started posting logos here... Is there anyone else on the forum to whom Puppy logo resembles David Suchet playing Hercule Poirot in the TV series based on the novels of Agatha Christie?

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[amethyst]

Hi, rockedge - some links with the 'rockedge' address may not work. When the puppy linux forum was down, I changed the links in my signature to rockedge links (which worked) but it didn't work today when I tried to access so I changed it again to the original addresses. There may be more instances like this.

[amethyst]

Who's paying to renew the old forum domain now?

[amethyst]

Since people started posting logos here... Is there anyone else on the forum to whom Puppy logo resembles David Suchet playing Hercule Poirot in the TV series based on the novels of Agatha Christie?
Puppy and Hercule Poirot.png

Must say I never made that connection. Puppy is innovative whilst Hercule is more "conservative"

[rockedge]

Who's paying to renew the old forum domain now?

I paid it. With funds from the donations landed from the Donation button on the forum. So who donated, paid for the domain renewals!

[mikewalsh]

Who's paying to renew the old forum domain now?

I paid it. With funds from the donations landed from the Donation button on the forum. So who donated, paid for the domain renewals!

.......and that is why we have the PayPal 'Donations' button. Doesn't seem fair for rockedge to have to find it all himself, does it?

Mike.

[rockedge]

Trying out some looks on a traditional path

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[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

I still think my "sweet li'l pup" would look awesome atop the archive, but.....the 'traditional' Puppy logo (and variants thereof) IS a 'globally'-known icon for the Puppy 'brand'. Probably best to stick with what everyone knows.....

Mike.

[tosim]

mikewalsh-Yes-I agree with you re donations. That is why in a different thread I had posted:
I sincerely hope nobody takes offense at this. IMHO, we all should (again for some of us), reach into our wallets, click on the "Donations" button, and "give a few".
I'm reasonably sure this is costing rockedge some extra dollars, so lets show our appreciation, PLEASE.

[rockedge]

Work on the conversion continues...... at this point I have a version of the original murga forum running as it was, on a Puppy Linux Xenial web server in my basement.

I have the Xenialpup running Apache2, PHP 5, mysql 5 which almost matches what John Murga's original server set up ran (I think). So I went ahead and set up the database and ran the import using a tool designed for huge database imports on systems running on a shared host. This was done as a test for a future import when the conversion is finished and the actual transfer of the murga site to it's new home happens.

Screenshot(75).png (51.79 KiB) Viewed 741 times

So now I have a copy of the original forum running on the last version of pbpBB in the version 2 series. Also I have a second instance of the murga forum running on this Puppy Linux Xenial web server that uses the original code base and file structure exported from John's server. This version runs but throws many errors since the original phpBB2 code is even older and the MySQL server is pre-mysqli and even my Xenialpup web server is too modern to run it error free.

But this is all good enough to run the converter tool on to bring it up to phpBB3.

The final hurdle in the conversion process is getting the attachments to be properly processed to be attached in phpBB3. I am setting these up to examine the inner workings in case we need to write our own attachment converter tool to finish the project successfully.

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[s243a]

Can we plese keep an archived copy at the old URL until we fix the search feature (see post) on this forum that doesn't let us search for three letter words like, "apt" and "pkg"?

thanks in advance.

[rockedge]

@s243a I am a LONG way away from having this conversion finished never mind transferred.

You will need to talk to the dev's at phpBB.com about the 3 letter word search issue. That is what is built in. At some point when my plate is not so full of complicated conversions AND keeping this site running at all considering the considerable attacks that are aimed at it day in and day out.

I give you the assignment of tracking down a fix!

There are several options of search index types for the forum. Keep in mind it took 4 days of constant running to create the search index for the old site conversion on my modern web server, so testing changes are somewhat involved. As is any of this work which involves huge data transfers for a single test, things take time. I mean several to many hours at a time for a single transfer or creation so for some tests or conversion attempts takes planning and consideration of the actual value of the test itself.

When you have it we can implement it in our code base.

IN the mean time use -> https://psearch.puppylinux.com/ this search will allow 3 letter search words and will search both forums

[s243a]

@s243a I am a LONG way away from having this conversion finished never mind transferred.

You will need to talk to the dev's at phpBB.com about the 3 letter word search issue. That is what is built in. At some point when my plate is not so full of complicated conversions AND keeping this site running at all considering the considerable attacks that are aimed at it day in and day out.

I give you the assignment of tracking down a fix!

There are several options of search index types for the forum. Keep in mind it took 4 days of constant running to create the search index for the old site conversion on my modern web server, so testing changes are somewhat involved. As is any of this work which involves huge data transfers for a single test, things take time. I mean several to many hours at a time for a single transfer or creation so for some tests or conversion attempts takes planning and consideration of the actual value of the test itself.

When you have it we can implement it in our code base.

IN the mean time use -> https://psearch.puppylinux.com/ this search will allow 3 letter search words and will search both forums

I appreciate the work done to maintain this board and I understand that this can be time consuming and challenging and I understand that the large database from the old forum makes this even more difficult.

That said, as far as I know the old forum is working as a read-only forum but perhaps it could be vulnerable to some of those attacks that you mention and if that is the case then upgrading or merging the old forum would be a higher propriety. Since it takes a long time to index such a large data set it would be worth looking to see if any of the search back-ends are more efficient. Ideally, it would be nice to have some kind of map-reduce algorithm that could be ran in the cloud to index the forum.

The three search back-ends that are supported are, Sphinx (supports min_prefix_len & min_infix_len), MySQL (supports "Minimum word length") and PostgreSQL (support "Minimum word length")

I never tried running a phpBB forums and I don't have access to any of the configuration files of the forum so it might be difficult for me to assist here. That said I have worked with other php based forum software (and sourcecode) before. If you tell me which search back-end you are using I can try to investigate it further.

[rockedge]

Hello @s243a At the moment I am creating a new index for the phpBB3 native search engine phpBB Native Fulltext

I had switched it to MySQL Fulltext after some php errors began to appear. I can not adjust this search method any lower than 4 characters without actually modifying the MySQL server's configuration itself. This we have no easy access to, but the switch eliminated the errors at that time. We have more control of the settings using the phpBB Native Fulltext method.

The phpBB Native Fulltext I can easily adjust the min word length which is now set to 3 characters. So a new search index needs to be created to revert back to this search engine which is now in progress. I will switch it back to the phpBB Native Fulltext as soon as the index is finished building.

We can observe how it works and go from there. I can arrange for you to have access to the necessary configurations and php code if the need arises. Meanwhile there is a phpBB3 development testing platform I've set up to try out extensions and other modifications that we can really dig into to straighten out the forum site search functions.

Your help and insight is highly appreciated!

[rockedge]

Made a major breakthrough with the murga forum conversion. The trick to get the attachments to convert from phpBB2 to phpBB3 is smaller steps

Lucky I am! that I have a Puppy Linux Tahr 64 and a Xenial that run web servers from the exact era of the early versions of phpBB

So phpBB 2.0.21 -> phpBB 3.0.7pl1 -> phpBB 3.0.14 -> phpBB 3.3.3 is the planned conversion plan. Following the PHP 5 up through PHP 7.2 path we need.

It is time consuming but this upgrade chain should do the trick!

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Curious. Just for the hell of it, I tried logging-in to my old Murga a/c. Wonder of wonders, it worked...!

Was this planned, or is it a 'side-effect' of what you're currently engaged upon?

Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh Yes it is planned, once the old forum is running on the latest version of code base, to allow the registered users to login and use the PM system and it might be easier to find ones own posts using those features in the new phpBB version.

New registration will be disabled. The Forum will be read only and no more new posts or topics allowed.

We feel like users may stay better connected in our community with the messaging system still working better than ever on the old forum

[rockedge]

With some trickery I was able to convert the attachment tables from phpBB2 to phpBB3 and insert the tables and data into a finished converted phpBB3 database. Because it is not completely converted properly, the attachments still do not show up in the posts but we are a step closer to a complete conversion.

The stages of the new conversion attempt will go 2.0.21 -> 3.0.7pl1 -> 3.0.14 -> 3.3.3

Notice the attachment fields are populated!

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[rockedge]

Success!

I have been able to convert the murga-linux dot org from version 2.0.21 to the latest stable version of phpBB. Attachments, avatars are present and working. Set to read only and the work of trimming the database for the final move to the puppylinux dot com server is now under way.

The final creation and import of the database to the host server is the last hurdle.

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[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Do I take it that, while all this behind-the-scenes stuff is taking place, there WILL be periods when the forum isn't accessible.....for whatever reason?

I've just got back on after not being able to access the forum for about 3 hours, though whether it's due to the "shenanigans" or some other reason, I cannot say.....

Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh There is no interaction with the murga-linux forum during the conversion work! I have a copy of it running on my local server in the basement to do all the work and testing.

I have no idea why the murga forum is down! It is not from the conversion project, if any thing goes wrong it's on a Puppy Tahr with a backed up save folder so no worries and the other server sits in my bedroom where the final stages of the conversion were performed and that is running Bionic64-8.0

Right now I am in the process of transferring the finished converted forum to it's new home and all of this is separate from John's original forum.

Something crashed on the VPS I think.