Proboards/Invisionfree/ActiveBoards converters

-pete- · Post by **-pete-** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 1:29 am

Hey guys, Hope you can help a total newb out here!

So I'm trying to export my WoW guilds website (http://s14.invisionfree.com/ShadowWolvesGuild/) into a nice shiny new phpbb3 board (http://www.shadowwolvesguild.net/phpBB3/) but I'm a total newb when it comes to doing anything like this.

I've downloaded the scripts and edited the settings file, do I need to do anything with them after this? when I run the script it looks ok but I don't get any sort of output from it? Where would the .sql file be saved? Do I run the scripts locally or do they have to go onto my server? (I'm using godaddy to host it who don't allow any sort of telnet or SSH access) Once i'm done can i just run the query in phpmyadmin to get the script going? if so where would i put the .sql file?

Sorry for all the probably stupid questions but this is my first time even trying to do something like this.

Thanks for the help

-pete-

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:44 am

phpMyAdmin should have an "import" function or something which allows you to upload a SQL file.

The script SHOULD produce output -- numerous progress messages, followed by "Complete! Press <enter> to quit". If it does not, you need to do this:
1) start->run->cmd, or Terminal on Mac or Linux
2) type "cd " then drag the folder containing the settings.py file to the terminal window
3) <enter>
4) "python members_phpbb3.py" or "python topics_posts_phpbb3.py".

Any output that isn't a regular progress message (read: error message) should be posted here.

-pete- · Post by **-pete-** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:45 am

Thanks for the speedy reply!

So I've just run my members script again and it worked no problem, however the posts script still doesn't seem to do anything. It runs fine (no errors etc) but I don't get any output from it, I've tried the same from both the smf and the phpbb scripts? I noticed that the .sql for members is created as soon as the script starts executing? is this what should be happening with the posts?

Please help, this is the final stage of getting my site running

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:30 pm

Have you tried running it in a terminal like I suggested?

-pete- · Post by **-pete-** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:07 pm

Yeap, tried running it as an admin in vista too, still doesn't seem to work for me, I've attached the converter files with all my info in them if you wanna give it a go yourself to see if I'm doing something wrong.

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 12:44 am

Did you install Python 2.5 or 2.4? Version 2.5 is required for this to work (it works fine for me on Windows XP)

-pete- · Post by **-pete-** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:57 am

Hummm... well thats annoying, it might be one of those vista "things"

I'll give it a go on my bootcamped macbook and report back

EDIT:
given it a go and still nothing, tried XP, Vista and OS X all using python 2.5, all the same result

Any chance of you running it and pming me the file?

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 3:56 pm

The file is quite large, unfortunately, which makes it rather difficult to just PM it to you.

I will see if I can post it on a private webserver and PM you the URL or something.

-pete- · Post by **-pete-** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:53 pm

Ok no problem, thanks alot

I still don't get why I can't do it myself :/

Burbruee · Post by **Burbruee** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:22 pm

Hey,

I need help with this script.
We are trying to backup our forum hosted at invisionfree
(http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_Great_Hunters/index.php) and moving it to our own server.

I have my own server where I will be hosting this, and I downloaded phpBB 2.0.23 and set everything up with forum id's and gave it a go.

The script ran fine, but I thought it was a bit quick (We have over 68k posts in our forum and the .sql backup produced was just over a MB)
As I imported it into phpbb I noticed most of the topics where there, however just the first page of every topic!

Did I do something wrong? I'm running a linux server with python 2.5 installed when grabbing the data from invisionfree.

And also another small problem not really related to the script but mysql server and it's character encoding. When I import the sql file either over ssh or with phpmyadmin swedish special characters such as 'å', 'ä' and 'ö' does not work after importing. Is there a good way to fix this and re-importing or do I need to open up the .sql file and search/replace all å with html-code & #aring etc?

Please help me, thanks.

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:51 pm

That is obviously wrong...it must've missed the pages (it's a crawler).

I could take a look, but I'll need to log in first (or you can PM/email me a settings.py file which I can use to check it out).

Also, I have a newer version which downloads boards and viewcounts, if you would like the view data to be imported.

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:20 pm

Ah, I see now. You aren't set to show 90 posts/topic, which is actually necessary for the converter to work (the newer version adapts to different numbers, but max posts/topic gives the fastest conversion).

Try upping your posts/topic to 90 under Board Settings.

Burbruee · Post by **Burbruee** » Sun Jul 13, 2008 10:31 pm

nneonneo wrote:Ah, I see now. You aren't set to show 90 posts/topic, which is actually necessary for the converter to work (the newer version adapts to different numbers, but max posts/topic gives the fastest conversion).

Try upping your posts/topic to 90 under Board Settings.

Ah I see, I'll try it right away.
Thanks for all the quick responses.

EDIT: I actually read that in the Instructions.txt but forgot the set it. >_<
Oh well, all is good now I guess. Just need to fix the character encoding for the database.

Burbruee · Post by **Burbruee** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:21 pm

Well, I'm still having problems, script worked fine and produced a 22 MB .sql file. However, I am unable to import this back into my own mysql database:

Code: Select all

 mysql -u user -p -D phpbb --max_allowed_packet=1024M < topics_posts_phpBB.sql
ERROR 1153 (08S01) at line 190745: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes

Google said to add ulimit -d 256000 at the beginning of the mysqld_safe script and restart, but it didn't help.

Oh, and how do I solve the character encoding issue when importing? å ä ö shows up as really weird characters.

Any ideas?

nneonneo · Post by **nneonneo** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:01 pm

Hmm, I didn't think that would happen. Your host has set a very low limit on the size of the SQL query, so it means you may have to rerun the conversion with a smaller packet size.

In topics_posts_phpbb,py, set topics_max_group and posts_max_group to something smaller -- 200-500 is OK for topics_max_group, and 50 (or less for safety) for posts_max_group.

For character encoding, the output file uses the same encoding as the input (i.e. the forum). Thus, you have to know what encoding you are using on the forum, and apply that directly to the SQL file.

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