DOS ain't dead - Forum maintenance on 2017-06-14

Berlin, Germany,
16.05.2017, 19:35

Forum maintenance on 2017-06-14 (Announce)

Yesterday my web-hosting service announced to me, that they plan to migrate the whole BTTR website (including the "DOS ain't dead" forum) to a new server in June 2017.

The new server will be faster, of course, but also have more recent versions of PHP and MySQL. These PHP/MySQL upgrades could cause some major issues for source code made nearly 10 years ago. ("DOS ain't dead" runs my little forum version 1 from 2008.)
I already contacted my service provider's technical support to register for a test account on the new server.

I'll keep you updated here in this ~~post~~ thread.

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Forum admin

Berlin, Germany,
28.05.2017, 22:09

@ rr

Forum maintenance on 2017-06-14

Post reply

> I'll keep you updated here in this ~~post~~ thread.

I've finished testing on the new server and results are pretty good. :-)
As expected I have to take care of different character encodings (ISO-8859-1 vs UTF-8), but I know, how to handle it.

I decided to not modify the forum software itself, because this could lead to serious trouble for people using old web browsers.

Important note: After the server move user passwords containing single or double quotes (' or "), and only those (!), need to be escaped using \ properly. If your password is, e.g., 1"23'4, you have to type 1\"23\'4. (Cause: Magic Quotes)
After your initial login on the new server succeeds, you can "change" your password by typing 1"23'4 again. That will then save the correct hash value to the forum's database.

Schedule (CEST):
1) 2017-06-13 (Evening): I disable the forum. (You'll then see: 'The forum is currently unavailable.')
2) 2017-06-14 (Morning): Web-hosting service move everything to the new server.
3) 2017-06-14 (Evening): I do some checks and minor adjustments. If everything is fine, I re-enable the forum. In case of fatal errors, I'll post a message to http://www.bttr-software.de/.

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Forum admin

Berlin, Germany,
16.06.2017, 00:01

@ rr

Forum maintenance on 2017-06-14

Post reply

> Schedule (CEST):
> 1) 2017-06-13 (Evening): I disable the forum. (You'll then see: 'The
> forum is currently unavailable.')
> 2) 2017-06-14 (Morning): Web-hosting service move everything to the
> new server.
> 3) 2017-06-14 (Evening): I do some checks and minor adjustments. If
> everything is fine, I re-enable the forum. In case of fatal errors, I'll
> post a message to http://www.bttr-software.de/.

I completed the migration to a new web server and a new database server.

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Forum admin

glennmcc

North Jackson, Ohio (USA),
16.06.2017, 05:56

@ rr

Forum maintenance on 2017-06-14

Post reply

> > Schedule (CEST):
> > 1) 2017-06-13 (Evening): I disable the forum. (You'll then see:
> 'The
> > forum is currently unavailable.')
> > 2) 2017-06-14 (Morning): Web-hosting service move everything to
> the
> > new server.
> > 3) 2017-06-14 (Evening): I do some checks and minor adjustments.
> If
> > everything is fine, I re-enable the forum. In case of fatal errors, I'll
> > post a message to http://www.bttr-software.de/.
>
> I completed the migration to a new web server and a new database server.

DAD seems to have survived the migration with no ill effects. :)

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http://glennmcc.org/