Major Software Upgrade Wednesday June 8, 2022

On Saturday May 28 2022 I intend to perform the first of two major version upgrades on the Brass Goggles forum software. I will begin around 12:00 Eastern Daylight Time and, based on my practice run, I expect the process to take around two hours.

Brass Goggles first went online in February 2007 using version 1 of the Simple Machines Forum software. After 15 years that software is now well beyond end-of-life and almost completely unsupported, except for the occasional critical security patch. Certain features, such as embedded YouTube videos, no longer work correctly (or at all.) Further, it has become necessary to change hosts, and the PHP 5 runtime environment required by SMF 1 is simply no longer available. Before we can even think of moving, we must upgrade to SMF 2.0.

What does this mean for you? First of all, the forum will be unavailable during the upgrade process which, as I said, I expect to take around two hours. During that time we will still have Spare Goggles to fall back on, and I will be tweeting regular progress updates @vonCorax. Second, when the forum returns it will look very different. The elegant Steampunk theme which Tinkergirl & Co. so painstakingly crafted for us is incompatible with SMF 2.0. We will be forced to switch back to a generic default theme, although I will be able to preserve some few elements of the current theme, such as the gears and the top banner.

Once the upgrade is complete we will begin preparing to move to a new host; I hope to complete this in late June. Once that is over with, we will be upgrading the software again to the current version, SMF 2.1, and will be able to begin redecorating.

If you have any questions, then by all means this is the place to ask them.

I've had to postpone the upgrade because our installed version of MySQL is unsuitable for the upgraded forum software. I'll contact the-wizard and arrange an upgrade, and then reschedule the forum upgrade.

I will be making another attempt to upgrade the forum software on Wednesday June 1 2022 at 12:00 pm (Noon) Eastern Daylight Time.

The upgrade failed again. I'll have to try again and watch closely as it fails; I will do that tomorrow at noon.

Been a bit more than 2 hours now.

RockyB wrote:Been a bit more than 2 hours now.

About 1:20, actually. I've got past the point where I stopped yesterday.

I've run into a disk space issue; the-wizard is addressing it now. Probably be down for a couple more hours.

Upgrade is now once again in progress.

Upgrade has once again failed, but at a different point, so I suppose that's progress.

Once again, I am beginning the upgrade.

That didn't work either. My next attempt will depend on when the guys at SMF (who I think are helping me on their own time) get back to me.

I've had an idea which I would like to try today (Monday June 6 2022) at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

von Corax wrote:I've had an idea which I would like to try today (Monday June 6 2022) at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

That didn't work, but I have another idea that I'll try tomorrow (Wednesday June 8 2022) at 12:00 p.m. EDT.

'ow's she doing? Just curious.

mwbaaailey wrote:'ow's she doing? Just curious.

This one's going to take a while. I'm copying the forum down to my test box, then I'm going to try upgrading there and copying back up. It looks like I still have about an hour's worth of copying down.

EDIT: I spoke too soon. That was an hour left on the database; I now have 5 hours left on copying the forum software itself!

For those not following on Twitter, I've completed the download and am beginning to install the copy of the forum on my test box.

Crossing everything that it works on your box.

Sorontar

14.04 UK GMT THURSDAY 9TH JUNE

Are you trying again at this moment?
Latest update I saw said you were trying again on the 8th June (yesterday).
I'm locked out and it won't accept my passwords.

RockyB wrote:14.04 UK GMT THURSDAY 9TH JUNE

Are you trying again at this moment?
Latest update I saw said you were trying again on the 8th June (yesterday).
I'm locked out and it won't accept my passwords.

Not so much "trying again" as "still trying." I should tweet that.

WE ARE BACK ONLINE! Themes are broken, so the site looks hella ugly, but I can work on that next.