[Solved] Forum maintenance coming soon!

[FJCC]

There is a message on the dev mailing list concerning migration of the forum to new hardware and software

[FORUMS] Heads Up! Testing will be needed on Friday and through June 30th

Dave Fisher dave2wave@comcast.net via openoffice.apache.org
9:34 PM [19-June-2018] (16 hours ago)

to dev

Hi Forum Admins and interested parties,

The AOO PMC with help from Apache Infrastructure will be migrating and upgrading the Forums through the end of June.

This will proceed in two phases.

(1) Copying the current setup to new VMs. This should be ready to test on Thursday evening US time. I’ll need thorough testing of several of the forums by the admins. The version of the forums being tested may be from early May. I will be available in case any dependencies were missed. Look for details when ready on this thread.

(2) After the initial tests are complete the new VM will be upgraded to the latest phpBB. We will need to test that as well.

(3) Assuming all goes well then over June 30th weekend we will shutdown the current forum vas and migrate the data to the new, upgraded VMs.

Any questions? (I may not answer until Thursday.)

Regards,
Dave

[Hagar Delest]

Thanks for the info.
For the record, I'll be off line from Jun. 28th to Jul. 5th.

I hope that it will speed up the forum response that is a nightmare since last operation few months ago.

[FJCC]

After a long silence, this issue has reappeared and there will be a migration this week.

Dave Fisher dave2wave@comcast.net via openoffice.apache.org

8:12 PM (2 hours ago) (This is 8:12 PM US/Mountain Time: FJCC)

to dev, delest.hagar
Hi -

Further status and plan.

The remaining issues involve phpBB 3.0.9 use of a function deprecated in php 5 and absent in php 7.

(0) Given information requested in the last email.

Tomorrow -

(1) Attempt to use newest phpBB 3.2.4 which works with php 7. I’ve examined the code and it looks right.

(2) If (1) is difficult then we will downgrade to php 5.

(3) Sync up from current forums.

(4) Add warning about migration downtime to current production.

(5) Create a blocking httpd configuration for during the migration

Wednesday

(6) Request community testing

Friday

(7) Perform migration.

Regards,
Dave

[RoryOF]

There will be a movement of the Forums to new VMs (Virtual Machines) by Friday 30 November; no specific information for downtime at present, but we may expect some disruption probably 29/30 November.

[Hagar Delest]

Details sent to Dave. I guess we will have more details in the hours/days to come.
That's good news!

[RusselB]

Thanks for the notifications. Hope that everything goes smoothly.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi Hagar and forum users/admins,

https://forum-test.openoffice.org/

>> (1) Attempt to use newest phpBB 3.2.4 which works with php 7. I’ve examined the code and it looks right.

I dug further and language packs for Hungarian and Japanese are not available.
I think that we need to look into this carefully before we migrate to 3.2.4.

Also, new have subsilver2 theme installed. It does not look like we use it, but it is not offered for 3.2.4. We will need to do more careful testing of all of the language forums.


>> (2) If (1) is difficult then we will downgrade to php 5.
I chose to have Infra downgrade PHP to version 5.6. Thanks Chris (fluxo)!

>> (3) Sync up from current forums.
Synced up files, avatars and databases. I will need two hours to do this either late Thursday or early Friday.

>> (4) Add warning about migration downtime to current production.
I think you did this sufficiently.


>> (5) Create a blocking httpd configuration for during the migration
I think I will just stop apache httpd.

(6) Community Testing.
Please start testing!

Regards,
Dave

You can try the testing site, everything allowed!!!
-> https://forum-test.openoffice.org/

For the record, here is the discussion held end June where several issues were raised: https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openof ... 34035.html
I tested some of them and the search by topic is still broken (will warn the list in the evening France time but if someone can do it sooner, feel free to report any trouble).

Edit: Thanks robleyd. The latest discussion about the migration (different thread from the summer discussion): https://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openof ... 35200.html.

[robleyd]

Reported it for you.

Edit: 03:04:34 UTC Thursday, 29 November 2018 And it is now fixed

[floris v]

It seems to work alright for the Dutch section. MAde a new topic and deleted it, could also access the moderator panel. I'm not sure about what we should be testing. Any ideas?

[RusselB]

While I'm not a moderator, personally I would be checking any of the commands/options that I'd be used to having access to, so that way I'd know if the things I'd normally be able to do are working as expected.
Just a suggestion

[robleyd]

I wonder if there would be a chance with the cutover to allow global mods to add users to other groups, where the group is anything less than moderator.
Idea being that when a user is banned, the mod doing the banning can also add the offending user to the Banned group. This would save the Admins a bit of time, and also tag the user as banned so they don't get banned again by another mod ; this seems to happen enough for me to notice it.

And while we are at it, mod access to user email and posting IP; purpose to check dodgy users against listings on http://www.stopforumspam.com.

There is an extension for phpBB to query SFS - https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... orum_spam/ - I suppose that's a bit much to hope for...

[RusselB]

@robleyd My grandfather used to say hope for all you can, but don't expect to get everything you hope for.

[robleyd]

don't expect to get everanything you hope for.

Fixed that for you