By Steady on

Hello,

I am a complete novice with mysql and drupal. I have spent the last week reading up on drupal and I have done my first install of the latest version and that went ok.

However, my problem is that I have just decided to help out a local kids sports club and they have a website that someone built for them in drupal version 4.6.3

They need to move their site to another host and obviously upgrade it. This is why I volunteered to help out and have been trying to understand drupal to help them out. They are a non-profit club and don't have the resources to pay anyone for this.

I know html and can build static sites with no problem, but I am struggling to take this further.

Here are some of the problems:

I don't know what I should do first. Should I try to install 4.6.3 on their new hosting account and then try to import a copy of the data base? (One problem I see is that I can't use the same database name on the new host as they add a prefix to all database files).

Should I try to upgrade the existing site before moving anything?

I am not sure if I am doing backups correctly?

I have lots of other unknowns but I suppose I don't know what I should do first. I have been thrown in at the deepend and I don't want to tell them I can't help them as it is too complicated.

I would hate to see them lose their site after 3 years of content has been added.

Please help. What should I do?

I have found this all rather confusing to say the least but I am willing to roll my sleeves up and learn if only I knew what I had to do.

Gulp....please help.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.6.x

Comments

MrGeek’s picture

MrGeek commented

i would get it to the new host first, get it working, then upgrade it - no sense in breaking it twice..

changing the name of the database should be easy - setting is in the SETTINGS.PHP file..

you'll need a backup/MySQL export to move it to the other host - HOW you do this depends on the current setup. but if you have PhpMyAdmin, it's easy..

basic steps should go something like this:
(consult Google/Drupal.org for each step)
1) export current database
2) get a copy of ALL the files on the old server
3) import the database on the new server
4) lay down the files on the new server
5) check SETTINGS.PHP and make necessary changes
6) change DNS, etc

then, after everything is up and running, tackle upgrading.. I think you will want to upgrade, one rev at a time to the newest version of 4.x - fixing things along the way, then jump to 5.x.. setting up a test system on the new host would make things much easier/safer..

this is all off the top of my head, and a 10,000 foot view, but you should get the idea.

Sam308’s picture

Sam308 commented

I just upgraded a 4.6.5 site directly to a Drupal 6.9 site

The site is: http://xlecom.com

I could not perform the typical upgrade, upgrading from 4.6.x to 4.7.x to 5.x to 6.x due to the possibility of loosing and corrupting data. Plus, most of the content in the site had reference links to other pages in the site, and therefore the upgrade would need to retain the same page / forum node numbers.

I installed a new Drupal 6.9 installation into a subdirectory and setup the site with the basic format and theme settings. I did not add any content or blocks.

I then used phpMyAdmin for the database editing environment to export the 4.6.5 tables and reimport the modified tables back into the 6.9 database.

It was not easy. I hade to first export the key data Drupal 4.6.5 database tables individually, then alter them in Microsoft Excel to match the database table field structure of Drupal 6.x so that I could import them into the Drupal 6.9 database.

The following are the database tables that needed to be imported into Drupal 6.9 and the order they were imported.

Import Order
============

#  Database Table              Excel Modifications                     Imported into 6.9 Database   
-- -----------------------     ---------------------------             --------------------------------------
00 users_roles *               00_ users_roles 6.x.xls                 00_ users_roles 6.x.csv
01 profile_fields              01_ profile_fields 6.x.xls              01_ profile_fields 6.x.csv
02 profiles_values             02_ profile_values 6.x.xls              02_ profile_values 6.x.csv
03 users                       03 users 6.x.xls                        03 users 6.x.csv
04 term_data                   - No Conversion needed -                04_term_data.csv 6.x.zip
05 term_hierarchy              - No Conversion needed -                05_term_hierarchy 6.x.csv.zip
06 term_node                   06_term_node 6.x.xls                    06_term_node 6.x.csv
07 forum                       07_forum 6.x.xls                        07_forum 6.x.csv
08 node_access                 - No Conversion needed -                08_node_access 6.x.csv.zip
09 node_comment_statistics     - No Conversion needed -                09_node_comment_statistics 6.x.csv.zip
10 node_counter                - No Conversion needed -                10_node_counter 6.x.csv.zip
11 node                        11_node 6.x.xls                         11_node 6.x.csv
12 node_revisions  **                                                  12_node_revisions.csv.zip
13 comments **                 13 comments 6.x.xls                     13 comments 6.x.csv

*  The users_roles table in Drupal 6.9 did not have any defined roles in this table (an empty table), so I skipped it.

** Both the node_revisions and comments tables needed extra work to make them compatible with the Drupal 6.x format.

I had to first import the node and comments tables from Drupal 4.6.5 directly into Drupal 6.9 as temporary node1 and comments1 tables and then modify the table structures in Drupal 6.9 to match the node_revisions and comments table format. I then exported the node1 and comments1 table data as csv files and re-imported the data back into the database into the node_revisions and comments tables. Lastly, I deleted (dropped) the temporary node1 and comments1 tables.

If you need an Excel utility to Convert the Database table data to CSV format for Importing into a MySQL Database table via phpMyAdmin, then use the following spreadsheet I developed.

http://xlecom.com/downloads/CSV_Convert_for_MySQL_Importing.zip

One important message for others who may attempt to do the same type of upgrade.

MySQL 4.x and PHP 4 only scripts will render your new site completely useless if running MySQL 5.x and PHP 5.

(1) Do not transfer any custom PHP block scripts into your new site without first testing them out in a test node page using PHP 5. The node Preview feature will help you debug your scripts before saving them to the database.

(2) If you had any custom PHP 4 only scripts within your old site, via the nodes (pages, forums, comments, etc...), and transferred them to the new site, then your site will get fatal errors during cron runs. This was the hardest thing for me to determine and debug to what was causing these fatal errors.

Hope this helps you,

Sam

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

I have tried to reinstall 4.6.3 on another server and I just can't get the thing to work.

When I go to my index page all that appears is the following:

{head} {styles}
{_BLOCK_.header.logo} {_BLOCK_.header.site_name}
{secondary_links}
{primary_links}
{_BLOCK_.header.blocks} {_BLOCK_.footer.blocks}
{_BLOCK_.node.title} {submitted}
{content}
{_BLOCK_.node.links}
{_BLOCK_.footer.message}

No pages appear and there is no way for me to log in or anything. I just get blank screens.

Is there any issue about installing 4.6.3 on a modern server?

Perhaps all I can do is try to upgrade the existing site as it is and then hopefully get it up to 6.10

Then copy it over to a new install of 6.10

I just hate it when I spend 25 hours on something with nothing to show for it because something doesn't work for some reason. I really want to help out but at the end of the day perhaps drupal is just not worth the effort.

Has anyone got any ideas?

Sam308’s picture

Sam308 commented

If you follow the procedure with the database table transfers as I stated above, then your upgrade should work fine.

Sam

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

Hi Sam,

You are really trying to help me I know, but I really haven't a clue about what you mean.

I have tried all sorts of things, such as dummy upgrade to 4.6.11 other to 4.7.etc and I keep on getting erros such as just seeing this as my home page:

{head} {styles}
{_BLOCK_.header.logo} {_BLOCK_.header.site_name}
{secondary_links}
{primary_links}
{_BLOCK_.header.blocks} {_BLOCK_.footer.blocks}
{_BLOCK_.node.title} {submitted}
{content}

I don't understand what your suggestion is and how to make it work. I am a complete beginner when it comes to mysql and digging in to Drupal.

To be honest I am really heartbroken about all of this.

I have now spent about 40 hours trying to get this upgrade to work and I feel we will lose 5 years of the kids data. I am really, really gutted right now and all my enthusiasm about finding and getting involved with drupal is very quickly being destroyed.

Yes, I know, there are things I don't understand, obviously. But the highly disappointing thing is that I don't know what the problems are.

I don't know if it is something I am doing wrong or if it is really a lot more complicated than it should be and the path to upgrading Is really very difficult.

As well as possibly ending up losing all this data, perhaps equally upsetting is what happens if in the future the kids site runs into problems upgrading from 6.10 to say version 8 or 9 in a few years time.

Do I throw in the towel and upset the kids and parents or is there any hope here?

I now this sounds like a last call for help and I sound really pitiful, well, frankly this is how I feel right now and I feel bad for not figuring this out for the kids. :-(

Sam308’s picture

Sam308 commented

(1) Upgrading directly from Drupal 4.6.x to Drupal 6.x.

I wrote a procedure and created a utility to help you with the conversion.

See the following page titled "How to Updrade Directy from Drupal 4.6.x to Drupal 6.x Procedure and Utility"

http://drupal.org/node/388994

(2) The current errors you are getting
From you previous post, you stated you are getting the following errors:

{head} {styles}
{_BLOCK_.header.logo} {_BLOCK_.header.site_name}
{secondary_links}
{primary_links}
{_BLOCK_.header.blocks} {_BLOCK_.footer.blocks}
{_BLOCK_.node.title} {submitted}
{content}

First try turning off (disable) all of the blocks and menus, and see if this helps you debug the problem.
Note: if you turn off the login box, you will have to login to your site using the following path:
http://yoursite.com/?q=user (the q=user part takes your to the login page)

Sam

Steady’s picture

Steady commented

Hi Sam and other who have offered help,

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time and trouble to write up some help for me.

Sadly, I still have been unsuccessful in upgrading to 6.10

This is obviously disappointing to say the least.

To cut a long story short I have ended up doing a fresh install of 6.10 and cutting and pasting key information from the old site into the new one.

Very time consuming but at least 50% or so of the data will be available to the kids.

I wish I could elucidate on exactly why I was unable to upgrade. I only hope that the experts who write the valuable drupal code can continue to try to make upgrades ever simpler and more newbie friendly when problems do arise.

I know this will be easier said than done but it will definitely help drupal take off even faster than it has in the last few years.

Thanks once again.