Problems moving board to another host

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:24 am

Sorry this is posted in the wrong forum area - please re-locate if necessary

Support Request Template
What version of phpBB are you using? phpBB 3.0.11
What is your board's URL? Old board = http://www.the289register.com/phpBB3 New board = http://188.93.114.8/phpBB3/
Who do you host your board with? UK2
How did you install your board? Someone else installed my board for me
What is the most recent action performed on your board? Update from a previous version of phpBB3
Is registration required to reproduce this issue? No
Do you have any MODs installed? No
Do you have any extensions installed? No
What version of phpBB3 did you update from? Not sure - maybe phpBB 3.0.0
What styles do you currently have installed? The default one I think - nothing fancy
What language(s) is your board currently using? English
Which database type/version are you using? MySQL 5
What is your level of experience? New to PHP and phpBB
What actions did you take (updating your board; installing a MOD, style or extension; etc.) prior to this problem becoming noticeable? No answer given
Please describe your problem. I inherited an existing phpBB3 system from someone that is live and working fine. My task is to move it to a new server from the hosting provider and once it is there, upgrade it to 3.1. However I can't get 3.0.11 working on the new server, so I did not get as far as upgrading it.

I did a test on the new server - installed phpBB3 and got it working, so I know PHP and MySQL are ok.

So I removed that, then followed the instructions for migrating the live board to my new server. Database import (done at the command-line over SSH) works fine - no errors. Database is about 8MB. Restored all the files and did a 'chown -R apache:wheel .' to make them all owned by Apache.

All appears to be fine - the config.php file has the database, user and password I set up. However, all I get are blank pages.

I am not sure how to troubleshoot this and would really appreciate your help.

I am relatively new to PHP and phpBB, but reasonably competent with linux, so if there's anything else you need, please let me know.

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janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:46 am

Did you read this?
https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... or-domain/

And than this:
https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... /upgrade3/

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:59 am

Hi there -

Really sorry - I posted this in the wrong forum!

I followed the first link you sent. Used the SSH method of export/import of the database. I was very careful to follow all the steps, and it all went exactly as described in the instructions.

I can't even get 3.0.11 to work, so I never got as far as upgrading to 3.1 on the new host - so no, I did not use the second set of instructions you provided.

If someone can re-locate this post to the 3.0 support forum for me, I would appreciate that.

Cheers,
Andrew

janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:03 am

I see your board on the url you give us??

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:16 am

hi - yeah, the URL I gave is the live board.

The new board that is not producing pages is http://188.93.114.8/phpBB3/

I had to roll back the DNS changes because it wasn't working, so there's no DNS name on the new one at present. If there needs to be one, you can test by setting a name in the hosts file of your computer I think.

Any tips on what logs to look in would be useful. I looked at /var/log/httpd/access_log and error_log, but didn't see much of use.

Regards,
Andrew

janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:34 am

did you purge the cache?

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:02 am

Hi - I think I did at one point, but I tried many things all day yesterday, so I am trying that again.

Currently, the cache directory is not readable by the group - only by the apache user. Httpd runs as user apache, but I wondered - is that normal?

Code: Select all

drwx------.  2 apache wheel   12288 Nov 22 11:10 cache

in the /phpBB3/cache directory there are lots of .php files, a queue.php.lock and a .htaccess, but no index.html. Is that expected?
(I am following these instructions: https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... pbb-cache/)

I deleted everything apart from .htaccess (since there was no index.html), but the page is still blank.

janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:12 am

Try to look in the config table from your database and look if the server setting are pointing to right name.

http://188.93.114.8/phpBB3/

david63 · Post by **david63** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:14 am

amulheirn wrote:Httpd runs as user apache, but I wondered - is that normal?

It can be - depends on how your server is set up. Having said that it can cause problems in that you may not be able to delete/move files as you are not the owner. You may need to speak to hosts about changing this.

amulheirn wrote: but no index.html. Is that expected?

No, but it is not a major problem. You may have accidentally deleted it at some point - just re-upload it.

Oyabun1 · Post by **Oyabun1** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:28 am

It doesn't look like the files are connecting to the database.

Did you do this?

Knowledge Base - Transferring Your Board to a New Host or Domain wrote: Final Steps

Rebuilding the config.php file

Please reference the following article for the steps necessary to rebuild your config.php file and replace the old one:
https://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/rebuil ... gphp-file/

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 12:04 pm

janus_zonstraal wrote:Try to look in the config table from your database and look if the server setting are pointing to right name.

Hi Janus - here's what I've got:

Code: Select all

select * from phpbb_config;
[OUTPUT OMITTED]
| server_name                  | www.the289register.com                                     |          0 |
| server_port                  | 80                                                         |          0 |
| server_protocol              | http://                                                    |          0 |
| session_gc                   | 3600                                                       |          0 |
| session_length               | 3600                                                       |          0 |
| site_desc                    | The 289 Register                                           |          0 |
| sitename                     | the289register.com                                         |          0 |

I guess this won't work when I use the IP address to reach the site. So I edited the /etc/hosts file of the host running the site, and browsed it from there. I get the same result.
If I ping www.the289register.com on that host, it resolves to 127.0.0.1, so I think this is fine.

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 12:12 pm

Oyabun1 wrote:It doesn't look like the files are connecting to the database.

Did you do this?
Knowledge Base - Transferring Your Board to a New Host or Domain wrote: Final Steps

Rebuilding the config.php file

Please reference the following article for the steps necessary to rebuild your config.php file and replace the old one:
https://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/rebuil ... gphp-file/

Hi there - thanks for this. I think it doesn't need rebuilding, but I could be wrong. My config.php file was this:

Code: Select all

<?php
// phpBB 3.0.x auto-generated configuration file
// Do not change anything in this file!
$dbms = 'mysql';
$dbhost = '';
$dbport = '';
$dbname = 'DATABASE';
$dbuser = 'USER';
$dbpasswd = 'PASSWORD';

$table_prefix = 'phpbb_';
$acm_type = 'file';
$load_extensions = '';

@define('PHPBB_INSTALLED', true);
// @define('DEBUG', true);
// @define('DEBUG_EXTRA', true);
?>

Obviously I have changed the $dbname, $dbuser and $dbpassword before posting it here. But I can successfully do a 'mysql -u USER -p' to get into mysql, so that seems ok. Once in there, I can do a 'use DATABASE;' too and see stuff in the tables, so I think this should be ok.

The config.php is as it was on the live host, but I have also tried specifying $dbhost to be localhost - no difference.

The new host has IPtables on it. In case this is causing the issue, I have permitted mysql on the input chain before the default deny rule:

Code: Select all

ACCEPT     tcp  --  localhost            anywhere            tcp dpt:mysql
ACCEPT     tcp  --  localhost            anywhere            tcp dpt:mysql

Needless to say, this made no difference either.

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 1:18 pm

I just checked and I can telnet to port 3306 of localhost, so I think it is not Iptables that is causing the issue.
Any other advice appreciated...
Andrew

MarkDHamill · Post by **MarkDHamill** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:22 am

I was asked to look into the problem. For the record the root problem was that PHP was not integrated with MySQL. I used yim to install the MySQL integration for PHP and the user was able to log in. I determined this by writing a program that called phpinfo().

amulheirn · Post by **amulheirn** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:32 pm

I can confirm the problem is now resolved.

Much kudos to you Mark - I really appreciate your help solving this.

Thanks also to the other posters who gave their time with various suggestions.

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