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By Greg J. Smith on
I've had a couple rough upgrades but nothing like I'm in the middle of sorting out. Yesterday I attempted to upgrade from 5.5 to 6.8.
My order of operations: Backed up the database and downloaded the entire public folder as a safeguard. Blanked everything. Uploaded 6.8 and ran update.php. I started getting "Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /home/XXX/public_html/includes/common.inc on line 1539" and could not access any admin pages. I could access nodes but no admin content. I deactivated all add-on modules (which shouldn't have been there in the first place) and updated again - same issues.
So, I fiddled with it more and tried to rollback to an order version of 6. No luck, same errors.
I then tried to rollback to the version of 5 I was using with my backup folder and database. This was a bad idea. My node URLs aren't working any more and I can't access nodes individually by clicking through the front page. Since this was WORSE than my experience in 6.8 I decided to move forward again and now I'm having the same issue there. I should have called it a day at the beginning and troubleshot the issue from there!
A few things. I did not turn off my theme (Typography Paramount) and some blocks and modules before the first upgrade attempt. I have noticed some messages referencing the common.inc and the theme - it is looking for Typography Paramount despite the fact it is not present and not 6.x compatible. I know this is probably not helping me find the cause of the problem. I've also been keeping tabs on http://drupal.org/node/346756 as it appears to be the most active thread dedicated to the "Unsupported operand types... /includes/common.inc on line 1539 issue"
How should I go about restoring my site? I'm now stuck between versions. Which version should I restore to? I'm considering making a new database, importing my backup into it and plugging it into a Fantastico auto-install of Drupal 6.4 (an option by my provider). Would this be the most rational starting point? I'm want to get ANY version working again to troubleshooting it and would rather not roll back to 5 again unless absolutely necessary.
Any input or direction would be appreciated. I definitely want to get going in 6 as I've given myself about 2 weeks to finish up the theme/redesign I'm working on! I'll be happy to provide more info if anybody wants to help me out.
Comments
Well yes, if you don't
Well yes, if you don't disable contributed themes and modules before attempting the upgrade then you can expect problems. http://drupal.org/drupal-6.0 has a good summary of the upgrade process.
Your best bet might be to revert to 5.x and follow the upgrade instructions carefully. If your backups are sound then this should not be a problem. In theory you could also edit the database manually to disable your theme and other contrib modules if you want to go directly from your 5.x backup to 6.8. Also note that your current "live" database may possibly be in an inconsistent state.
>My node URLs aren't working
This suggests that you may not have copied back the .htaccess file that lives in Drupal's root folder. There's no magic - if you can restore the codebase to it's previous state and can restore the backed-up database then it will work fine.
It's a bit late to mention it but a backup strategy should include some provision for testing the restoration process!!
But you should be able to get the site going again. Good luck..!
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
Solved
It was .htaccess -> I should have known better.
I downgraded to 5.5, nixed modules & themes, upgraded to 6.8, cleared cache and I'm good to go.
Thanks for the input folks! :)
:-)
Glad to hear you sorted it. Happy New Year!
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
gpk
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www.alexoria.co.uk
@gpk's advice seems to make
@gpk's advice seems to make perfect sense. It seems likely that the problem is due to your theme, so when you try upgrading from Drupal 5 again, just make sure to turn off your theme and go back to one of the Drupal core themes (e.g., Garland) before you do the upgrade (as it says in the upgrade instructions), and hopefully everything will be fine.
This doesn't sound like a good idea. First, I can't think of any reason why using Drupal 6.4 would be likely to help fix your problem. In addition, there have been a number of security fixes made between Drupal 6.4 and Drupal 6.8, so it is a bad idea to use Drupal 6.4 on a live site. You should generally always use the most recent Drupal release on each branch (i.e., either Drupal 6.8 or Drupal 5.14 at the time of this writing). No responsible hosting provider should be offering Drupal 6.4 as an option anymore.
Good luck!