Forum Nightly Maintenance: Oct 26 - Oct 29, 2020

[Jaysen]

Folk, I spent a bit of time this weekend fighting with the actual upgrades (more on that later). There are some issues with the current phpBB data set that will require nightly maintenance to prepare the DB for migration. Here is the expected timeline and outages. All time are Eastern.

CLOSED -- Monday, Oct 26, 2020
7p Some features will be "wonky" as add on package have code upgrade applied. These will be temporary and the site will be usable
8p Forum will go off line for core software upgrade (full backups exist). A message will be posted to let you know when we expect the forum to be back online. Current expectation is less than 60min

CLOSED -- Tuesday, Oct27, 2020 -- updated 10/27@1818
6p I will start untangling things that are making upgrades impossible. There may be slowdowns as I need to copy files around. There will be swearing. Much much swearing.
CANCELLED 7p Forum off line for 10-15min to allow a non-transactional backup and final clean up. This will be the base line for migration.
9p Look for announcement detailing the new forum/gallery sites

CLOSED -- Wednesday/Thursday Oct 28/29, 2020
7p Non-disruptive backup and data sync for test site.
8p Test site off line for "practice" doing final migration.

Please note that we are NOT migrating the site Oct 30 or the following days. I will be traveling. I will post rules about the test sites and what to expect in the test site announcement.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Jaysen]

There have been a few hiccups tonight. The ancillary updates are completed. I will be taking full backups now and will continue with the core upgrade at 8p ET

[Jeff]

Jaysen, I can’t tell you how much we all appreciate the work you are doing on our Forum!!!! Jeff

[Jaysen]

Tonight's work is completed.

There were several issues that are not easily resolvable. Hopefully we will have more success tomorrow.

Jaysen, I can’t tell you how much we all appreciate the work you are doing on our Forum!!!! Jeff

Thank's Jeff. Hopefully we can get you another decade of use out of the systems (with a little more management )

[Capt UB]

Thanks Jayson.

Many many years ago I updated our system, about 3 dozen 3.5 disks.... This is not counting the backup disks done before upgrading! I made a mental block of the OS..... I'm sure it was Win OS of some short....

Bob

[Jaysen]

Folks, I have "completed" the disruptive work planned for tonight. I'm working to get the shiny new site all nice and pretty. If you all promise to NOT TELL ME WHAT IS BROKEN I will give you all the pre-pre-preview. It is 24hr or so behind. I know things are missing. Let me get caught up with what I know is wrong. I'll let you know when I'm ready to drink from the firehose.

The new site is http://community.boatbuildercentral.com (it will redirect you to the login; It uses the same username/pw as the old forum)
The new gallery is http://community.boatbuildercentral.com/gallery (you have to log into NEW FORUM first and I KNOW THE LINK IS MISSING)

[gstanfield]

I was still making a list of dead links, but I promise not to tell you about any of them at this time.

[Jaysen]

I was still making a list of dead links, but I promise not to tell you about any of them at this time.

Yeah... I don't need that ruptured aneurysm right now. I've had to reverse engineer the phpBB internals to make up for modules that were not properly installed (nothing like dropping columns from the user tables, running an update, installing a middle module, revising the schema change, forcing the old module out (delete files not run the uninstaller), installing the final model, forcing it out, then installing unofficial php that relies on all those previous schemas and trying to convert it to an entirely new db schema).

NEVER EVER EVER write dynamically generated, random column sql inserts. This is making "noql" and "big table" look simple.

[Jaysen]

We have the new forum templates up and ready for review. Not 100% but you can start getting used to them

Http://community.boatbuildercentral.com

[Jaysen]

All migration testing and planning is complete.