Issues with munged personal avatars, attachments on moved 3.0.3 forum

[sekell]

I have a forum at http://www.gnttype.org/forums/ It was previously hosted on a small Win2K server box on DSL at my home. I had some power problems in mid-Nov 2007, and that resulted in the box losing power. It didn't seem to come back 100% clean. I took the site off the net, and sought a hosting company.

After some difficulties with 1&1, I chose realwebhost.net. Downloaded a fresh copy of 3.0.3, and worked with realwebhost to have it installed. Then I took a dump of the database, and moved that to the new box.

The board came up, but the (1) the default smilie images were gone (2) all personal custom avatars were munged and (3) all attachments were munged.

#1 was easily by moving the avatar files over to the new server.

#2 and #3 seem to be related. Those files are buried in the database. Can't seem to figure out why they are munged. Some look only a wee bit munged, and some look like color bars.

A second dump was done, and only the relevant areas of the database were left in the file. I sent this over to Joey at realwebhost.net and he put this in. No change.

The command used for the dump on the original (Windows) host was:

mysqldump --user=vbb --password=gnt.231.vbb --create-options vbb_gnttype

Not sure what the issue might be. Clearly the database could not be terrily damaged - there are almost 8000 accounts in it! What would cause the picture files to get screwed up on the migration back from a text file to the database?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott Keller - [email protected]

[SNN]

Not sure but if the images are stored to the filesystem, it will not be restored with a database, you'll have to move them manually.

Did you have anything in /forumdir/customavatars/? (or something like this)

[Lynne]

You may want to take a look at this thread I started back when I was running 3.0.3: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=140710

[sekell]

I believe the database is 4.1.11-nt on the old box. That is what is indicated in the dump files.

All of the personal avatars and attachments are embedded in the database, not files in directories like the default smilies. I can see the binaries embedded in the dump. I have been able to recover all the smilies just by moving all those files over separately.

U2Lynne: The suggestion from Freddie Bigham regarding the "ALTER TABLE" commands...where should those be executed prior to a dump? That sounds like a plausible solution.

(Clearly I'm a database n00bie and did not set this up to begin with...)

[sekell]

OK...had a few pointers from the hosting staff. I'm into MySQL on my Windows box. Its version 4.1. No problem typing commands.

The database is named vbb_gnttype. However, the tables are titled `gnt_attachment`, `gnt_customavatar`, `gnt_customprofilepic` and the like. Looks like one more thing to make it harder...

So far haven't figured out how to get it to accept the table names that are so different from the database name. Any suggestions on syntax here?

Once I get that figured out (and figure out how to save the changes if necessary), I should be able to get a fresh dump, move that over, and restart things.

[sekell]

The database is named vbb_gnttype. However, the tables are titled `gnt_attachment`, `gnt_customavatar`, `gnt_customprofilepic` and the like. Looks like one more thing to make it harder...

Any suggestions from the SQL mages? This one has me stuck.

[peterska2]

gnt_ is a table prefix. Make sure that you have specified that you use this prefix in your config.php file.

[sekell]

It is specified.

I think there is a glimmer of light shining on the issue now. The link says to issue the following commands:

ALTER TABLE attachment CHANGE filedata filedata MEDIUMBLOB NOT NULL, CHANGE thumbnail thumbnail MEDIUMBLOB NOT NULL

ALTER TABLE customavatar CHANGE avatardata avatardata MEDIUMBLOB NOT NULL

ALTER TABLE customprofilepic CHANGE profilepicdata profilepicdata MEDIUMBLOB NOT NULL

Apparently words defining fields, such as "attachment" in my case, would be replaced with gnt_attachment, "customavatar" with gnt_customavatar, etc. I do see these fields in the previous dump.

I believe only the fields after the TABLE field need be modified to suit my system. The others can remain as indicated. Does that seem correct?

In addition, each line should be followed with a ";", and the proper command to elegantly save/exit needs to be executed. Sound right?

[Lynne]

That sounds correct. Of course, do a backup before you do this! You may only run one command at a time through the Admin CP (I believe).

[sekell]

Once the ALTER commands are executed, should another mysqldump then be executed at the OS level, or does anything need to be "saved" in any fashion first?

Just want to confirm. I've already made a duplicate copy of everything, executed the commands, and have done the mysqldump to a fresh filename. Based on raw size alone, it appears that the file is notably different than its predecessor. I have yet to manually investigate the relevant areas.

Again, note that the old box does not have a working copy of vBulletin on it, so I can not see if its working until I migrate the relevant areas over to the new database.

[sekell]

I made the changes and they seemed to have worked. Only some of the custom personal avatars did not take. Since most did, I will consider it a success. Once we upgrade the site to a newer version, all will have access to their CP's so they can change their custom personal avatars. For the moment, we won't worry about it. All the attachments, avatars, and most of the custom avatars seem fine.