Can't even login to admin to upgrade from 4.7 to 6.4

Posted by telex4 on October 11, 2008 at 11:14am

I'm trying to upgrade some sites based on Drupal 4.7.2 using Flexinode to use Drupal 6.4 and CCK. However, I can't even login to them! When I go to login to the sites it can take a few attempts for it to work; when it finally does let me in, if I go to /admin I just get a blank page with the number "2".

I have tried upgrading the site using update.php to Drupal 5.1 and 5.2 and 6.4 in various different steps, each time trying to login and I always get the same result.

It's pretty frustrating as I can't upgrade the web site without being able to login to admin to use the Flexiconvert module and, well, use the site!

Any tips very gratefully received.

Comments

The "2" is a bug (now fixed)

Posted by gpk on October 11, 2008 at 11:21am

The "2" is a bug (now fixed) to do with not having permission to view the access denied page or somesuch. If you look in your {watchdog} table in the DB you should be able to see if you logged in successfully and what happened when you tried to access /admin.

If you are having upgrade problems it's usually best to go to the last version of 4.7.x first, then to the latest version of 5.x (which certainly has the "2" bug fixed), and finally 6.x.

gpk
----
www.alexoria.co.uk

OK, thanks. I upgraded in

Posted by telex4 on October 14, 2008 at 8:35am

OK, thanks. I upgraded in about five steps and now have them running on Drupal 6.5.

Now all the fun of migrating from unmaintained modules!

Great news, well done!!!

Posted by gpk on October 14, 2008 at 10:58am

:-)

gpk
----
www.alexoria.co.uk

Where to get latest 4.x files

Posted by jhutchins on October 11, 2008 at 2:30pm

I have been avoiding upgrading some 4.7.7 sites because there were so many potential problems with upgrades and so much confusion in dealing with upgrading modules. Now, probably due to regular upgrades of the base system, I'm getting errors in the MySQL queries, and the 4.7.7 sites are failing. You recommend upgrading to the latest 4.x version before upgrading to 5.x - where is the latest version even available? What is the latest 4.x version?

=-=

Posted by VM on October 11, 2008 at 2:38pm

go to the drupal project page = http://drupal.org/project/drupal
click on the view all releases link = http://drupal.org/node/3060/release

scroll down the list to to find the last release of 4.7 (which I believe is 4.7.11) = http://drupal.org/node/208598

When upgrading to Drupal 5.x rememeber to overwrite your settings.php file. There was a security fix added to settings.php around 5.2 or so.

If modules are of "good

Posted by gpk on October 11, 2008 at 4:27pm

If modules are of "good quality" then in principle upgrading from your current 4.7.2 install to the latest 5.x (core plus contrib modules) in one step should be OK. If not then doing it in stages is sensible, to make it easier to isolate and fix any problems.

i.e. disable all contrib modules, upgrade core to 4.7.11, upgrade contrib modules to their latest 4.7.x release (you may need to re-enable them to do this) ... how much you do in one go depends a bit on how well it is going - if problems then "slow down" and maybe go back to the last successful step ... take DB backups at each stage to enable you to do this.

I must say I upgraded an old 4.6.x to 5.x a while back with no problems at all ... I think a lot depends on how well supported the contrib modules are/how well their update routines are implemented.

gpk
----
www.alexoria.co.uk