Cretster

In the meantime though I have just logged into phpmyadmin and found the details described by PPlanet, and tried to change that same bitoptions value for the user having the issue. It does appear to have worked for me also, as I was then able to log in as the user, although I am waiting for them to confirm that all is now well.

Apologies for the delay replying Marc as I've been on vacation for the last week and not really had connectivity. I did check recently the details for access and had mentioned near the beginning of the thread here that I wasn't certain what the correct details were specifically required for the "Admin CP .htaccess" section I'm afraid. I feel stupid asking but what's the best way for me to locate that, i.e. will that be buried somewhere in my hosting settings and I've missed it there, or actually in say the htaccess file etc?

No problem Marc, that's updated now as requested.

Thanks very much Marc - I've updated the details for access just now, although I wasn't certain what the correct details were specifically required for the "Admin CP .htaccess" section I'm afraid. Would that go by any other description at all by any chance? The user's member name is: i486dx266 You will see in the admin CP when viewing their account that it shows in the recent activity section they have been logged in twice, but this status is from the times when the above error has been displayed and access has not actually worked when trying to log in. Not sure if that information is of any help at all. Please let me know of course if you need any additional details Many thanks indeed Jim

Hi guys, a little while ago a forum member of mine changed their email address on their profile, and used a confirmation link sent to them, but kept getting a timeout error on the forum when this link opened. This appeared to be a hosting issue so that's fine, and eventually I was able to approve the change for them via the admin CP. Their profile now shows the updated email address correctly, but they cannot log into the forum, and from the admin CP I receive the same error message they get if I attempt to login as them. If I reset their password this appears to change correctly, but yet again, the same error is giving when trying to log in as them. The error they/I receive every time when trying to log into their (my own profile access is fine) profile is: Sorry! Your account does not require validation Error code: 2S129/4 I have googled this error code and found a few other instances online referring to it, but was not able to find any explanation to the cause of this or solution to it unfortunately so am none the wiser, on how I must rectify this limbo state that they appear to be stuck in, or identify how to prevent it for others. I'd be extremely grateful if someone could advise some help in resolving this as they've been very patient while I have tried in vain to resolve it myself. Many thanks indeed Jim

Thanks Jim, I think I did apply it recursively but I'll check to be sure. They do have a function for "fixing" file ownership and I did try that but also didn't seem to change anything. I shall check these bits though and then contact them further. Really appreciate all the advice from you guys here once again, thanks. 🙂

Thanks Jim, appreciate it. Thankfully at long last I have my forum back online again, so obviously I'm super stoked about that and appreciate very much all the input on here. The only big issue I still seem to have now is that no images (in respect of avatars and image uploads/gallery images) appear to be working after this migration and getting the forum online again. When I look at Chrome Dev tools I'm seeing a 403 access denied/forbidden error for each image that tries to load like this, so I'm assuming it's a permissions issue on the directory they're stored. I've temporarily tried using a 777 permission on the forums/uploads/ directory, to test if that might help but unfortunately it hasn't, so I'm not sure what else might cause a permission error for pictures in the forum? Or have I got the wrong directory perhaps for doing that? Just about every setting in the storage settings section of ACP does point to there anyway. Anyway, if I can sort that out then hopefully I'll have some very happy members now we're on the latest forum version.

Actually I think I just found it anyway! Looked through the settings in Hpanel and spotted this, which matches the 1440 value in the error. Seems odd to have a path specified as just a number like this pic. Have messaged host anyway to ask them about this.

That's great thanks for confirming about that setting Stuart. Which process needs completing though sorry? Oh sorry I think I see what you mean now, that the normal forum url has an issue since the upgrade is not completed? That's fine then if that's the case, I just kind of assumed since the upgrade stopped on that first step (login) that it wouldn't have made changes really yet. No matter though since the site/forum cannot be used currently anyway. Great anyway, I will ping the host and ask them if they can advise on that PHP session error. I was hoping it would relate to something I could find details for either in the hosting settings, or with something in my files, but no point wasting tons of time chasing shadows if only they can advise on it!

I did go through this page about migration between servers and didn't spot anything about that setting, so perhaps not needed? Pretty sure the other considerations on that page are taken care of anyway.

Also I just spotted this while going through init.php This is making me think now that since the hosting has been migrated and the new DB has a different prefix and different credentials that I will need to presumably set this variable as described here. I must have missed that detail somewhere previous tbh if that's the case. If this was not set, would it potentially manifest in the error I'm seeing about failing to correctly start the PHP session? I could imagine it might do potentially. I hope therefore I can get the correct credentials for that! Can I just check please the correct format it's saying here would therefore need to be like this? 'TEXT_ENCRYPTION_KEY' => md5(old_database_passOld_database_name), And that the correct details for these are what I can grab from conf_global.php? Thank!

Right, home from a very long and 'challenging' week at work now! I ran the compatibility checker and it's all nice and green, no warnings, everything looking very happy. The main forum URL now is giving an error complaining that a select for a table named core_alerts fails because the table doesn't exist, so I'll check in phpmyadmin on my original hosting to see if it did exist there, and if that's some potential migration issue maybe. With regard to running the upgrader though, I do have progress at last, since it is at least appearing to try now. However, it's failing to properly start a PHP session, and telling me to contact my host. I'm wondering if this could be due to one of the php options/extensions available in hPanel on their site being set incorrectly, but I'm not savvy enough with PHP and its settings/options to know. I shall do some digging online before I message the host though as I'd assume it will be something others have run into before, and possibly something I might be able to resolve, if I investigate causes for that scenario happening. I could swear I saw something when I first googled saying that might be a permission error but I'll have to find it again now! For what it's worth, here's the output from phpinfo, in case there's something damning on that!

Thanks Stuart, pretty sure I did try it on 8 also since that was what the server had been changed to iirc when I first got alerted to site being down and tried to manually run the upgrade. I will double check though of course thanks. It may be that there was another error that I already resolve on 8, then tried other versions, but haven't retried since possibly, so I'll revert once I've confirmed that. Thanks again!

Thanks Marc, totally appreciate that. And this is the catch22 I kinda have at the minute as I'm basically trying to upgrade it to 4.6.7 but cannot run the upgrade script due to this current issue. Since I can't access ACP or the forum itself, I can only do it by manual upgrade but just getting php errors. 😞 I've now just updated PHP on the hosting to 7.2 again, and this has moved the errors past the init.php file to the reactable.php file found at mycretsterforum.com/public_html/forums/applications/core/sources/DataLayer/DataLayer.php With this error: "syntax error, unexpected '' (T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE), expecting '-' or identifier (T_STRING) or variable (T_VARIABLE) or number (T_NUM_STRING)" So after some looking online I found that curly braces were apparently needed around the variable in question, i.e. $_SESSION['ipsDataLayerEvents'], worked ok when changed to: {$_SESSION['ipsDataLayerEvents']} The issue of course here is that there will be absolutely tons of such instances throughout all the php files on the site. If I only have to do that formatting to fix it then I will try and find a way or some script that might be able to effectively do a find/replace on that sort of thing, I guess. Thanks for confirming about the supported PHP version Stuart, that certainly helps. As above to Marc, I've changed it to 7.2 now but looks like I might have to somehow manually update everything to that format, because I have already manually FTPd the upgrade files to the site but cannot run them because running mycretsterforum.com/forums/admin/upgrade/index.php is what is giving me all these PHP errors, even after setting it on 7.2 again. I will run the compatibility checker again tonight anyway in case I missed something. Really appreciate all the input from you folks though thankyou kindly!

Thanks Marc I did do a compare of the init file using Beyond Compare and I'm sure it didn't flag any differences, but this whole thing about that bit of PHP syntax is bothering me since adding it into online checkers in some cases does give an error, so it's confusing me. I think I need to make myself a test plan/matrix (spreadsheet or something) to keep proper track of things I've tried in case of any overlap or duplication of effort etc! I did run the latest version of the checker last night and there were incompatibilities, but I assume that's because it's checking suitability for version 4.7.x? I.e. should I be using the older version that it shows there from 11 May 2021, since that's the first one after the 4.4 version and my forum files are 4.5.4.2?