SJDGC Forum - Completed ... Finally

So after a nice length of time (20+hours) I have finally finished the migration of the SJDGC vanilla forum to SilverStripe forum. It took a lot of hours for something so small.

The beauty of these types of projects for me is I get to use what ever method I would like to get things done. I get to use my old DB classes I have used for years and some straight no framework PHP coding.

things i missed when first planning
  • html -> bbcode
  • db collation issues
things overlooked
  • posts last edited field when not a topic starter
  • Members in the Community Member Status

After doing some test imports of the topics for the forum I realized a bunch of things I had missed when planning the migration. I forgot the fact that one database was using latin_swedish_ci for collation and one was using utf8-general-ci which led to some funky characters. This was fixed by the following.

  1. if text field change to blob in db table
  2. change back to your previous text field type
  3. set collation to utf8 ... general_ci

The end result of all of this is the complete migration of the old forum into the new system. The users are linked to their respective posts. All the topics and comments are in place and the text is all correct.
A nice bundle of scripts for a Vanilla->SS Forum migration. Also some nice utility scripts for fixing text strings I had to make after some DB corruption/errors/mistakes. And the cherry on top is some nice snippets for my PHP editor for silverstripe and my libraries... gedit :-)

// a super simple to strip non-ascii characters from a string
preg_replace('/[^(x20-x7F)]*/','', $text_to_clean);

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Comments (0) October 17, 2009 5:28 am

reinstall ubuntu 8.10

after some issues with Ubuntu9.04, i finally did a complete reinstall. nice and fresh and vanilla version of Ubuntu8.10. in my mind the latest stable release. they need to work on 9.04 some more before calling it a stable release like they did.

some steps for anyone that wants to know how to do a reinstall of linux without losing your data.

  1. make sure you system is using multiple partitions on the tree
    i never suggest doing a single partition install of any operating system including linux.
    i have 11 partitions for my single harddrive to maintain mount point sanitation.
  2. backup all data in "/home", "/root" and any other custom mount points you may have created.
    if you have a webserver like apache installed you will want to backup "/var/www" aswell.
    you may also want to make a backup of "/usr/local/src" if you have downloaded and built any program sources.
  3. backup services/servers datas. if you use mysql do a dump of you databases.
  4. BACKUP "/etc/"
    you may need some old configuration files, especially if you have altered any of them yourself in the past
  5. make sure you have copies of any modules you will need.
  6. double check "/usr/share/" to see if you have any plugins, extensions, themes, icons, fonts that you need to have for applications you will be reinstalling.
  7. *record your partition schema on paper so you can reference it later*
  8. after backing up everything
    you may start the install
  9. download, if you haven't, the ubuntu8.10 livecd Desktop edition.
  10. when finished burn this image to disc or create a usb autoboot drive
  11. reboot your computer and set to boot from cd or usb
  12. go through the whole setup and when asked for the partitions delete everything but your "/home" partition and the partition you backup your data too.
  13. install will format drives and start installation.
  14. after installation reboot and you should be set
  15. copy data back into the folders you want
  16. reisntall your server softwares
  17. import your mysql backup

for the most part when using linux if you remember to segregate your data into different partitions you will be much safer and faster. smaller drives are easier to clean and you can unmount a partition and not worry about damaging any of the data. 

my schema
/dev/sda1   /boot
/dev/sda2   swap
/dev/sda3   /
/dev/sda5   /usr
/dev/sda7   /tmp
/dev/sda8   /home
/dev/sda9   /data
/dev/sda10  /var
/dev/sda11  /extra

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Comments (0) October 04, 2009 8:34 pm

issues ubuntu 9.04

after upgrading from 8.04->8.10->9.04 in less than a month i was stuck with a system that wasn't good enough. which as a linux lover was upsetting.

i have been a linux user for a decade and a ubuntu user for half of that time. i haven't seen such issues with upgrading since the old days.
current issues with 9.04 for me:

  • Xorg version doesn't support older FGLRX driver
  • USB problems

system specs:

  • AMD Turion64 1.8gz Mobile
  • 2 GB DDR PC2700
  • ATI Radeon Xpress 200M - mobile
  • HP Pavilion DV5000z - laptop

the new Xorg server doesn't support the previous versions of the fglrx drivers and you have to use the community driver ATI or Radeon. this would be great on 8.04/8.10, when i was running them previously i stopped using the proprietary fglrx driver and used the ATI with much better performance and a better desktop experience. though in 8.10 reinstall the ATI/Radeon drivers are working just as bad as when I had 9.04 running. this also bothers me because i shouldn't have such issues and should have the correct open source ATI driver like the last install. funny how things work.

ultimately to get this version of Ubuntu running at the moment you need to hack your system a little bit. on 9.04 i pretty much completely downgraded the Xorg server to the one from 8.10 which is a little hacky for my liking. but it allowed correct fglrx driver performance.

USB issues are still there. long delay on autodetect and mounting. often times not having access to my wireless trackball and complications with touchpad.
i am thinking maybe the wireless being on the usb_core system might be messing up the enumeration. not sure though.

conclusion i reinstalled 8.10 ... which i will describe some details of in a later post.

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Comments (1) October 04, 2009 8:16 pm