migrating and upgrading site

Hi.

I've recently been asked to migrate a website to a new host and take over managing it. I was told the site was running Joomla, so I agreed as I've done work with that in the past. I get the site dump and discover it's using Dolphin 7, which I've never used before. Oh well, how hard could it be :)

I changed host and database config in the inc folder, then uploaded the files to the new webserver and tried to access the home page. Nothing. Apache error logs complaining about _Files() function being reserved or something, so it doesn't like php 5.4 yet. I download latest Dolphin to test on 5.4 and it works fine. The one I'm trying to migrate seems to be version 7.0 build 9. So I need to upgrade to a version that supports php 5.4.

The upgrade page on this site only shows incremental upgrades from 7.0.0 to 7.0.1 etc. Do I have to do each incremental upgrade all the way up till 7.1.4, running the upgrade script for each iteration?

I'm thinking it would be easier to do this on my local system (wamp) using php 5.3 before uploading to the host (lamp). Any reason this wouldn't work?

Is there anything else I need to be aware of when migrating a Dolphin 7 site? The test install added a cron job which I'll modify for the site I'm migrating. I'm also not sure if the site is licensed :/ can I check this in the database somewhere, or only once I've managed to login as admin?

thanks :)

Yes. Each update must be done one at a time.

I'm thinking it would be easier to do this on my local system (wamp) using php 5.3 before uploading to the host (lamp). Any reason this wouldn't work?
That can be a problem. Windows computers don't care about case. Linux is case sensitive, so there have been issues in the past with proper case in database table names when trying to transfer from windows to linux.

What i prefer to do instead of a wamp install is to grab VMware Player. With that you can install a actual copy of linux in virtual machine.

As for why the server your using is running php 5.4 i do not know. All major current distros i am aware of do not ship with the latest version of php. As far as i am concerned, the latest versions of anything server side like php, apache, mysql, ect, should not be running on a server which is why distros like fedora and Ubuntu which are better sutided as desktop distros should not be used for a server. Distros like CentOS and Redhat Enterprise are best for server use and by default ship with time tested stable versions of software rather than the latest versions.

If you're on cPanel, the default version of PHP it recommends (through EasyApache) is 5.4, while 5.3 is marked as deprecated.  I'd recommend PHP 5.3, unless you're sure any site you run won't have issues.

That all said, the below changesets include the fix for PHP 5.4 compatibility.  I recommend you backup the site before applying them (you may want to apply them manually, using the changes noted on the pages).  Dolphin 7.1.0 includes this fix, and newer versions include a number of improvements and potential security fixes.

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/changeset/16971

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/changeset/16967

Thanks for the info so far.

I've since gained admin access to the original Dolphin installation (it's licensed), so decided to attempt the upgrade on the old host first. Big mistake. Whoever set up the site modified the default theme instead of creating their own, so everything pretty much disappeared with the first patch I installed. I'm going to struggle to recreate the site if I don't know what it looks like, so I try restore from backup, but that doesn't quite work, probably because I'm working on a Windows system and the backups where just ftp dumps, so permissions were lost and some hidden files probably not transfered. There's a whole bunch of customizations on the front page that aren't there anymore. I'm hoping the host has an actual backup available.

Onto plan B which I should have done from the start. Migrated it to a CentOs VM running PHP 5.3 and tried the upgrade again.

Just finished upgrading to 7.1 (no errors during the installation of the 3 patches) and am following post install instructions:

- Recompile system language file from Admin Panel -> Settings -> Languages Settings -> Languages

When I go there I have the following options:

_adm_txt_langs_keys · Add key · _adm_txt_langs_languages · _adm_txt_langs_languages_add · _adm_txt_langs_languages_import · _adm_txt_langs_settings

No languages are listed in any of them, and hitting compile under _adm_txt_langs_languages doesn't appear to do anything (I've cleared the caches). Is this normal? Other text fields seem to have placeholder text as well, such as _adm_mmi_manage_modules in the modules sub-menu, and some text on the site front page. What can I do to fix this?

Is there some guide to what permissions are needed for the various directories and files used by Dolphin? Other than 777 for the cache, cache_public and tmp folders...

Languages will not properly recompile if the langs folder is not writable.

In addition. The files within the langs folder are normally created by the webserver during install and thus should be owned by the web server. Thus ownership can create problems as well especially for files moved from one server to another. So all files in the langs folder also have to be writable.

The install guide contains all of the initial permissions. http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/DetailedInstall