i upgraded my site to 2.2.31 but its riddeled with bugs and i want to go back to version 2.0x

can i safely do this? and how? will it restructure my databse for me??

Thank you for all your help

I'd say that this is risky. There are DB structure changes that you'll need to account for in a rollback. If you made a copy of your old DB before moving to 2.2, then this is simple; but otherwise, caveat emptor

Rabideau is correct....

Assuming you followed the instructions to a 'T', you will have a complete back up of your site and database created right before the upgrade. Simply re-load all of those files and that database back to your host or local server and you're good to go.

If you did not back anything up...you are up the creek without a paddle my friend

If you dont have a backup - then you will need to wait for the full release of 2.2.x

even with a backup its useless. i have 45000 members plus hundreds more a day

not useless... just time consuming...
so the longer you put it off, the more users you will lose, or will have to re-register.

Hopefully you use a MySQL module of some sort like backpack...

you can simply do a clean install of the site and use that module to upload the DB back-up that is so daunting, instead of spending the next 12 or so hours breaking out your database structure and content into bite size chunks for phpMyAdmin.

First things first is to put up a 'temporarily closed' page or something to stop the membership growth in it's tracks until you can get things put back.

You're dead in the water right now if the bugs are preventing your site from functioning correctly.

Take a break...walk around...relax...brush yourself off, and get back into the 'swing of things'...you'll be back to the 'way it was' in less time and with less headache than you thought!

Hang in there!

It would seem that 2.2.3 version of XOOPS is pretty unpredictable or just "buggy" would be the right term. Some things work for some folks, others don't have such luck. It must be because of slight differences in their server setups.

For example, 2.2 autologin hack by GIJOE apparently worked for many people, but not for me, despite the fact that I've done everything right to implement it and checked it a few times. In the same sense, a weblog module by Tohokuaiki seems to be working for some people (as reported), but to me it's giving an internal server error whenever loading its "recent blog entires" block.

And although I have't discovered any other major bugs, as things stand I wouldn't be surprised if more are hiding somewhere. All of this gives me that "dirty" feeling (you probably know what I mean) and makes me wish to just install the whole site from the start, clean off, the last most stable 2.2 relese (that would probably be 2.2.2).

I'll have to take a look at that backpack thing. If it would be possible to securely back *everything* up, delete XOOPS and install it again cleanly and then just reinsert all data with absolutely no loss or risk I would actually like to do it.

The installation I currently have active is a year old (from the beginning actually) and I've learned XOOPS as I used it on the fly. This time it would just feel good and right if I install it clean once again and based on that experience run it as cleanly as possible and with no mistakes.

So, I have one question about these database backups.. What about images? As far as I know images are actually stored in directories on the server so I should watch not to delete them so I don't loose stuff like users avatars, image gallery images and such, right?

Thanks
Daniel

Quote:

There are two items in the equation for sites backups, and it looks like this:

Database Data + physical files = full site backup.

In a database driven Web site such as XOOPS, the database will change much more than the physical files. For instance on my site I make daily database backups (automatically) and backup the physical files to my site when I make an addition, or edit a file. Usually every few weeks to maybe even a month between physical file backups.

One of the things that you need to do as a webmaster is decide how much you can afford to loose of your site, due to a catastrophic failure, and tailor your personal backup strategy to target your results.

I use a native MySQL mysqldump script run by cron daily at midnight for my site. Seven different cron jobs that give me seven different copies of backups for my database.

Why do I keep so many copies on hand? Just in case I do not visit my site and notice that it has failed, or been hacked for a few days. I can go back to a backup made before the event to restore my site. Otherwise with an automated backup the file would be overwritten everyday with the damaged changes to my database, and I would not have a clean file to restore.

Anyway I hope this helps some, and gets some webmasters thinking about backups. Backups are as important as the adding of content to our site is.

That's smart. I also have mysqldump cronjob running every midnight, but I don't backup all physicall files so often. It's harder to do when you're on dial up connection as you have to download/upload quite big files to save your backup at home or restore in case trouble comes. And my hosting space isn't abundant either..

Of course, there are still measures I can take. For example, I don't need to backup all XOOPS files since most of them are from the XOOPS release tarballs and never changed except when upgrading to a new release. So, this leaves me with only data files (such as these images) and XOOPS files that have been applied a hack or modification of some kind that I want to save. I can just download these periodically and save them to my disk, with the periodic DB download. That should work for dial up people.

Well, I guess that if I decide to do a clean install I will do this way:

1) Temporary close the site to freeze all content additions.

2) Determine what files need to be backed up and what are the locations they have to be put in after the clean install. Also note what modules are installed.

3) Backup and download all these files as well as the full database backup.

4) Delete everything

5) Install XOOPS again

6) Install all modules that were installed before.

7) Fill in the database from the DB backup

8) Put back the backed up data and hacked files in locations they were before (or just reapply the hacks to existing ones on the new installation).

9) Reopen the site

That should be it. After this I would have a clean XOOPS install with the old DB and data, modules and hacks, but without any glitches that were creeped in the old install.

That's quite some work though and some things should be ensured before as well, such as the means of restoring a database. Just manually reinserting the database through something like phpMyAdmin would take ages. Maybe something like backpack can help with that.

I'm not sure if I'll do that yet. It may very well be that I can resolve remaining glitches without a clean install at least with the new and more stable releases of XOOPS. My site is currently functional actually (autologin and weblog recent block not working, but the site as a whole is OK).

Thanks
Daniel

Looks like y'all are understanding the process quite well

I just want to mention that for mario' situation, to be able to go 'backwards' requires that both the databse and the site files were backed up in order for it to work.

In some instances of updates to xoops, especially the difference between the 2.0.13.1 version and the new 2.2 version, the databse structure has changed....so simply backing up the database from the 2.2 and then re-inserting it into a 2.0.13 install will cause some problems and things will not work.

Be sure to check the logs and accompanying info for any database changes made between versions as this will prevent you from dumping all data and re-inserting into previous versions.

The moral of the story however, is to be sure to back up everything before upgrading or altering your sites core files, as without the back up, you are lost.

For me, I only use the 2.2 versions as test and trial sites, as it has not developed far enough yet to include all of the modules and functionalities that I have in my 2.0.13.1 sites.

On a posative note...threads like this and the experiences of the users with the new version are essential to being able to advance it and have it grow to be even better than what it is today!

Happy Xoopsing Everyone!