Attachments from phpbb 3.0.8 to vb 4.1.0

[vicius_the_one]

Importing attachments worked fine, absolutely fine, but they all look like this or they are not looking at all. All attachement appear in posts but when opening in happens this :
.doc are not opening
.pfd are acting the same
images are looking very ugly and impossible to distinguish their content

PS: I am in position of just simulating my new licence of vB on my localhost with XAMPP. I try this before i install vB on my server.
PS: Same were loking my images when i previous restored my backups in phpbb(the same way >>> localhost with xampp)
Should be xampp the problem or ....?

[Trevor Hannant]

Can you give us specific error messages, screendumps or, even better, a link?

Why not install vBulletin on the server you're going to use but in a different password protected directory. That way you can actually try it out on the live machine to get an accurate picture of how the import will work there

[vicius_the_one]

Well i can't give any link as long as my problem occurs offline in xampp. (loclahost). For now i don't have password for my host account, and also i don't have password for phpmyadmin too. That is why i try it offline first.
Not having these passwords look how i did it :
1. i downloaded my site backup in .txt format
2. i created in xampp phpmyadmin a database with name and user name the same with mine, with site working
3. i imported my previous backup into that database i created in phpmyadmin
(for now i had the source database with all tables into it)
4. i created another database with phpmyadmin to export for vbulletin
5. downloaded from ftp : attachemnts, avatars, smilies.
6. configured vbulletin and also impex on xampp
7. i managed all modules of impex except 2nd with association users(i don't understand what to write in the right case for every user !!!)
8. in attachements module of impex i specified full path so it could import them and it imported almost all excepting 13 from ~1300(it is not a problem that.)
9. all modules ran(runned) fine and import was succesfully
10. updated counters. all ok
11. in posts there are all attachements appear, BUT when opening them they show a scrambled image, or a defective file in case of .pdf, .doc etc.

Question : is there any posibility that hosting to encrypt data on server ?! OR simply it must work ONLY ONLINE ON SERVER DIRECTLY ?!

PS : I must tell you a very interesting fact :
Earlier when I made previous backups on server, and tried to restore them on localhost in the same format(phpbb3 to phpbb3), it happened the SAME. That is why i think there is a problem with xampp or ftp or data are prorcessed different when they are downloaded. hmmm.

[Trevor Hannant]

Try downloading your database backup in .sql format instead of .txt

If it happens with phbb3 to phpbb3 also, then either the backup is screwed or the import process of that backup is screwing it.

[vicius_the_one]

Donw backup

That is the way I downloaded my backup ! but resulted file does not have .txt extension, it has .sql instead !. Should I backup in gzip or bzip2 mode instead ?

[Trevor Hannant]

Shouldn't need to. How big is the database you're backing up?

The most reliable method of backing up and restoring a database is with shell access via ssh. This is because backing up with a PHP script like phpMyAdmin can result in PHP timeouts errors and an incomplete backup file. Please see the instructions here:

Backup:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_backup

Restore:

http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/maintenance_ssh_restore

P.S. If you don't have shell access, some people have also reported success with these scripts:

MySQLDumper:

http://www.mysqldumper.de/en/index.php

MySQLHotxcopy:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134821&highlight=mysqlhotcopy

Bigdump:

http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump.php

[vicius_the_one]

My uncompressed backup( .sql format) has 15 mb ! Pretty small.

So you tell me I should backup database with one of those 3 softs?...instead of regulary backup way of phpbb3 ?

[vicius_the_one]

MySQLDumper:

http://www.mysqldumper.de/en/index.php

It is agreat tool. thanks a lot.
I saw it backsup including all features including attachments. It makes a backup about 250mb. I can also split it in 10mb parts.
PS : I will get my host / phpmyadmin password

LE : I got my password for cp phpmyadmin, put mysqldumper on ftp. It works very fine. happy holidays Trevor bd