Changing Servers

Will changing servers mess up my forum?

[madmatt69]

Hi everyone,

I'm planning on changing to a new host soon. My biggest concern is that I have a very active forum on my site, and I don't want to loose the posts. I'm using phpBB right now, and all the posts are stored in a mySQL database I believe.

Has anyone had experience with moving phpBB to another server, and keeping all the posts? Are there any special stes I should take?

Thanks for any response. I really appreciate it :)

Cheers,
Matt

[jatar_k]

yes, I have

using phpmyadmin was a chore. This was a fairly large forum and I had a lot of trouble with the search tables.

The dump files were to big to import into mysql. I piped them through eventually and that worked. The best way to do it is to just tar the directory from mysql and slap that on the new server.

How may posts are we talking?

[coopster]

The dump files were too big to import into mysql.

Wow, really? How big is too big? What if you didn't dump the whole database at once? Or what if you used the -T option on mysqldump [mysql.com]?

-T, --tab=path-to-some-directory

Creates a

table_name.sql

file, that contains the SQL CREATE commands, and a

table_name.txt

file, that contains the data, for each give table. The format of the

`.txt'

file is made according to the

--fields-xxx

and

--lines--xxx

options. Note: This option only works if

mysqldump

is run on the same machine as the

mysqld

daemon. You must use a MySQL account that has the

FILE

privilege, and the login user/group that

mysqld

is running as (normally user

mysql

, group

mysql

) must have permission to create/write a file at the location you specify.

[jatar_k]

near 2 million rows in one table

couldn't run it from within mysql, had to do

mysql -u name -p < somefile.sql
(think that's the right syntax, can't remember)
for the import.

The dump through phpmyadmin would hang, the admin wouldn't give me ssh access. Then after I crashed the server and kept grabbing 90% plus of cpu he gave me full access and we got the full data. ;)

[bobnew32]

What is ssh access?

[jatar_k]

searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid14_gci214091,00.html

I just mean using command line as opposed to phpmyadmin or some other such GUI

[jamie]

matt,

just go to your admin panel and choose data backup (remember to gzip the file).

then install a completely new board on your new server (there are good install instructions with every phpbb downlod), go to the admin panel and choose restore backup, and upload your tar.gz file

there are great instructions here:
[phpbb.com...]

if you don't have access to the admin panel it is a bit more difficult, but not impossible.

don't worry if the board goes down for a while. it's not the end of the world, and any members you might lose through it being offline for a day or two aren't worth their salt anyway ;-)

good luck

[madmatt69]

Thanks everyone for the great info :)

I'll give it a shot.

I guess my forum isn't SO big, compared with many others..It's got abotu 200 members and 300 posts. Big enough though that I don't want to loose anything.

I'll let you know if it worked.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

[jatar_k]

I wouldn't worry too much at that size, standard dumps and imports should work just fine. You shouldn't need to jump through any hoops. ;)

[coopster]

Scary when the moderator prints things in bold and then winks...especially on his 3,000th post. Keep up the great work, jatar_k. We appreciate your contribution of time and knowledge.