E-Blah Converters - Print Topic

I've been working most of the night pushing out the new converters for E-Blah. ?So far I've got YaBB 2, and I'm talking with a few people to try to get a converter for more forums, such as phpBB. ?Right now this is just in early testing stages, so it needs testing to see that everything works. ?Not everything is converted (as there are diffrences in the systems), but as of right now the following is Converted:

- Members (including PMs)
- Messages
- Boards and Categories
- Member Groups (only groups a member is a part of)

Reasons to convert can be found here.

I need someone to test this converter to make sure everything works fine on it. ?To install simply upload Convert.pl and the *.cdb files to the directory where E-Blah will be installed. ?CHOMD Convert.pl 755. Next, run Convert.pl. ?The converter will walk you through the two steps and then you're forum will be converted. ?Nothing is deleted from the YaBB installation. ?Before running the converter E-Blah must be installed (ONLY installed, do not post messages, add members, etc -- they can, and WILL be written over).

DO NOT CONVERT ON TOP OF A CURRENT E-Blah INSTALLATION.

After you've converted report the results back to here. ?Remember this is for YaBB 2.0 Pre-Release -> E-Blah Platinum 9. ?I claim no responsibility for problems you have. ?If it wipes your server, that's your fault. ?I've tested it several times and it appeared to work fine. ?It's being released under the GPL, which can be found:

http://www.eblah.com/license.php

DO NOT download unless you agree to the terms specified in this license agreement.

Way to go Justin :D Pity I don't have a YaBB board to try and convert :-/ No point in converting an empty board eh ?

I'd try to help with php, but most forum systems I know use MYSQL, and I'm still in the flat-file stage. :P

Check this thread or the downloads page for more download links.

If anyone wants to write a good detailed documentation let me know. :)

Hi! I'm struggling with the phpBB converter... once it gets to http://dan.funchat-forums.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/Convert.pl?convert=phpBB_2-0-17,step=2 page it comes up with page cannot be displayed error and the server log states that the script terminated unexpectedly... any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

PS I've tried playing with CHMOD settings etc... if I put the WRONG password into the box it goes to an error page, but putting the RIGHT password comes up with the error 500 page.. the phpBB board i'm trying to convert from has 100000+ posts and 400+ members... the SQL database is over 200MB in size are any of these factors? also is there a way to get it to convert from the SQL backup file instead!

[Thu Apr 20 22:24:31 2006] [error] [client 82.3.32.73] Premature end of script headers: /home/fhlinux198/d/dan.funchat-forums.co.uk/user/htdocs/cgi-bin/forum/Convert.pl is the error message in the server log

The post counts is the issue. The converter is doing a LOT of work, and so it times out and the server closes the connection. This is GOOD at times, but for converting large forums -- very bad. Do you have physical server access (like where you can change the configuration)? If you do, you can change the timeout time to something really high so it can convert. If you have SSH access I MIGHT could convert it for you (but it could be time consuming).

Hi Justin, thanks for the quick reply! Unfortunately I dont have access to the server as its a shared server.

what if i deleted half of the forum, converted it and then restored from the sql backup and then deleted the other half?

That wouldn't work because the converter doesn't append the files, it writes over the old ones.

Hmm.

The best way would probably be to move to a non-shared server. :( I could converter it with my closet server (maybe), but it'd be a pain to get to your server (take all day to transfer file by file ... gzipping could fail if it's too large, etc). :-/

thanks.... I'll try and see if I can persuade the server owner to change the timeout time first as they might do it as a one off which would solve my problem

The timeout for something this big would have to be changed to possibly 15 minutes (or even longer). It's huge.

Hello.  Glad to have found E-Blah software and this forum.

I run a fairly new Sopranos discussion forum at EZboard.com (software and hosting services in one package). The ezboard software leaves much to be desired, and the prices for maintaining a forum with features like sticky topics and chat will be prohibitively expensive at next renewal because the forum is getting a LOT of traffic.

I would like to switch the forum to different, much more powerful software on a 3rd party server and use my own domain name.  phpBB2 was highly recommended, and one feature I was told it had was a software script that would convert posts from the existing EZboard forum to the new, phpBB2 based forum with poster/author names and thread structures in tact.  I was just about to settle on using that software when I discovered that it won't apparently allow me to move individual posts from one thread to another, pre-existing thread.

The software I choose must have that ability.  And it must also be capable of assimilating a backlog of posts on the existing ezboard and transferring them to the new forum, in tact.  Can E-Blah do both of these things for me?  And if it can't directly transfer the posts from the old forum, can I do a two-tiered transfer -- first to phpBB2 or some other intermediate format -- and then to E-Blah?

E-Blah can merge posts to threads and also split posts.

You can transfer your forum to phpBB2, then convert it to E-Blah (a converter is on the downloads page).

If you have any problems, just let us know. :)

I am trying to convert my yabb2 boards, messages and members over but I get an error "Convert cannot find boards directory." I CHMOD the Convert.pl to 755 and also uploaded the YaBB_2.cdb. What am I doing wrong.

Make sure you specified the correct directory to the boards directory.

Also, make sure you are using the latest version of YaBB (not a beta version). I hope this helps. If not, I may be able to look into it for you.

Thanks I got it to convert but I lost my status as the administrator and now there is no one who is the administrator to the site. What do I do know?

Hmm, is there a Ranks2.txt file inside of the Prefs directory? I'm not sure the converters were meant for the newer versions of E-Blah.

Edit that file and add your user ID (such as 1) to the member = () in the Admin section, ie:

member = (1),

HELP!

As the last step in a process of forum relocation and redesign that has spanned several weeks, I tried to convert a board from phpBB (which itself was converted from ezboard) to Eblah, got a confirmation that the database was converted, and then promptly lost administrative privileges, even though I'm shown as logged in under my username on the welcome message.  I no longer have the administrator button as an option in my menubar.

I can't make sense of the instructions above to the poster who had a similar problem.  I don't understand what to do with respect to the Ranks file and the administrator number or ID.

On other fronts, board membership is now shown at 505, and this corresponds to the 500+ dat files I saw listed in the Members folder.  Also, the screen names listed in the List2.txt file in that same Members folder match the names that I know were registered to the old forum.

Apparently only the member database was transferred, however.  There are no forums listed or accounted for at all.

Need help ASAP with getting administrative powers back and actual converted forums.  I must finish this conversion before Saturday.

ETA: The contents of my Ranks2.txt file are as follows:

Administrator => {
name = 'Administrators'
members = (2,)
}

I don't understand the parenthetical #, unless it refers to the number of members registered to the forum prior to the conversion.  There was my own administrator's account and a dummy regular account I set up to test double check the look of the forum for non administrators.

This:

members = (2,)

Should be:

members = (1),

There's no comma after it though.

Also, what is your member ID? When you go to your profile from the board index (at the bottom where it shows members logged in), the URL should be something like:

http://www.eblah.com/forum/v-memberpanel/a-view/u-1850/

Whatever the number after 'u' is is your member ID. For example, mine here is 15. Martin's is 1850.

That's the number that should be where the 2 is.

I got the admin powers back after fiddling with a number of files in the Members folder and the Rank2 file. I think the problem was caused by the fact that I was a poster on the old board under the same screen name, so when all the new member names were added to the database, FlyOnMelfisWall then appeared twice. The member number for the transferred membership was 2 while there was no number at all -- only the name -- for the FlyOnMelfisWall account I created when I set up the E-Blah software. I am always hesitant to just start winging it with changing settings, prefernece, and related files. But in this case it seems to have worked.

Next problem: what about the failure of the forums to convert? The script converted the membership database but not the actual messages. I have a blank forum with no boards or messages.

Hmm? It should have converted the messages fine. Are there anything in the Messages directory? If not, what version of phpBB were you using?

Okay, Justin, after further investigation, experimentation, and several re-conversions of the forum, I think I've found the issue . . .

Keep in mind that the forum I'm converting was originally an EZboard forum.  To get to eblah, I followed the recommended advice: converted the ezboard to phpBB, then converted THAT forum to eblah.  The intermediate phpBB forum appeared fine . . . messages in tact, in the proper order, proper associated data, username, etc.  That board is also fully functional.  I can add to or edit the messages and forums I transferred from EZboard as well as start new forums and topics on the phpBB board itself.

Now, the messages originally posted at and moved from EZboard do appear to have all transferred to an eblah database because I can see a lot of them unformatted in a file called "0.txt" (2.49 MB) in the forum/Messages directory.  ALL of the messages in this file were posted at the original EZboard forum, no exceptions.

Problem is, they will not display on the new eblah board.  They are invisible on the main board index immediately after conversion.  I can solve the category and forum name visibility issue by changing the settings in the admin CP, but the messages themselves never appear and their locations seem to have all globbed up in the very first (top) forum.  That forum shows the post total (4,227) that existed at the phpBB board, but all under one thread . . . which lists 282 pages!  All the other forums show a total of 0 messages in 0 threads.  Furthermore, when I attempt to view the messages in the one glob forum, I can't get anything to appear.  The 282 links do not work to display any messages.  You still just see the same message index after clicking.

In contrast to how the eblah script is handling these EZ-board-originated messages, it  DOES appear to have properly transferred messages originally posted on the phpBB board AFTER the intermediate conversion.  I have no problem seeing the test categories, forums, threads, and replies I posted to the phpBB board.  Nor do I have any problems posting new messages to any of the forums (ez-board-originated or otherwise) at the eblah forum.  The associated message txt files for phpBB or eblah originated threads also carry distinctly different titles, i.e., a very long string of numbers like "1152322465.txt" instead of "0.txt" like the glob file.

Would be very grateful for further help.

If you could e-mail me your phpBB forum URL and login and then the E-Blah converter (and forum) URL, I'll try to see if I can figure anything out.

Hi,

I have managed to get my converted boards to show, but now all of the users just show up as guests and with a number, instead of their old phpbb user names. Any ideas what I can do?

Thanks

Michael Costello :)
http://www.inlineplus.tv

Hi,

I hope someone is able to help me with changing over my users usernames, because I have got the forum looking good now, and this is my last barrier to letting people transfer to the better E-Blah system!

My phpbb forum is http://www.inlineplus,tv/forum
My new E-Blah forum is at
http://www.inlineplus.tv/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl

Thanks

Michael Costello :)

Try upgrading to the latest version, you are running 10.05

If you would prefer me to take a look then pm me the ftp login details to the E-Blah forum.

Hi,

I've done the upgrade, and it didn't fix the problem. But can I just say how nice it was to do an upgrade and not having to redo the template :)

Michael Costello :)

Still doesn't look right, you have red X's instead of icons

Go into te Admin Center and choose Rebuild All Boards then Rebuild the Member List

OK, all fixed up, I had to install a 9.71b forum, convert and then upgrade to the latest.

Enjoy

Could someone try to write a cutecast 2 beta 2 converter to eblah? (Cutecast download)

It's a very old software and full of security holes. But in 2003 it was easier to install on linux than eblah (that's why I did it). It's my last non eblah forum and I'd really like to see a converter.

Many thanks.

Hi All,

Just curious if anyone has a converter for teemz to E-Blah?

Hello,

I managed to convert a vB forum (over 200MB) to phpBB, but when I try to get it from phpBB to E-Blah I get the error 500 after 15 minutes, spat out in unprocessed HTLM in the web browser. Setting the TimeOut in httpd.conf to 2400 seconds (40 min) did not help. Apache's error log says it was an unspecific premature end of the Convert.pl script.

If I understood correctly there is some way to run the script directly from the command line, but perl Convert.pl just spits out HTML...

Could you help me with this issue, please?

The user title has to be "Administrator" for them to be added into the Administrator group during conversion.

This has a vB converter. If it works, I have NO clue. It worked on the small SQL you sent me, but not sure about a huge one. Try it out and let me know. Make sure you FIRST install a new, working, 10.2 forum. Then run the Converter and you should be able to convert into 10.2. Make sure it's working before running the converter, though.

If it works, let me know. If not, let me know. I'm not sure how PM's are converted. They are converted, but not sure if they convert correctly. Check those and see. :P

It did indeed seem to work fine on the small version, but after a lot longer than 15 min it did again spit out the Error 500 message when I tried converting the big one. The URL read "step=2" at the end when the unprocessed HTML with the error code popped up.

The Apache error.log reads:
Premature end of script headers: Convert.pl, referer: http://localhost/cgi-bin/forum/Convert.pl?convert=vB

The script did manage to convert 177MB worth of posts, so clearly it did do something. However, those posts won't show up on the forum. PMs seem have converted. At least there are files for them, but I can't actually log in to check. E-Blah seems convinced I should be using the small database you used for testing and that I DID manage to convert, as I just dropped the big one right on top.

Maybe some sort of intermediate stage could be added into the process? Say convert a batch of 5000 posts at a time and interact with the browser after each batch? Would be a nice way of letting the user know what's going on, plus it might avoid this timeout problem. I've began learning to program Perl, but I'm afraid I am nowhere near the skill level needed to do it on my own just yet.

I can't actually log in to either incarnation of the forums even though it did import the password hashes intact. The settings you provided for me to add to Settings.pl do not seem to make a difference. It keeps telling me I have an invalid password though I'm sure it's correct.

I've replaced the admin user's password in vB with qwerty123, taken a backup and replaced the file in the URL I PMed you earlier. This should let you at least try to log in to my "Nosforit" account in the backup. The "Test dummy1" account has the password 123.

Ok, vB passwords are done differently.

http://mightyhitter.com/vbulletin-password-encryption.html

There's a slight error on that page, as the + should be a coma. I've fixed the converter to add the salt to the member ID, but now you'll need to make a change to QuickCore.pl:

Find:

Code

			$crypted = md5_hex($_[0]);

Add this after:

Code

			if($memberid{$username}{'salt'}) { $crypted = md5_hex($crypted, $memberid{$username}{'salt'}); }

This will fix it to where you can login.

This hopefully will work. It now uses AJAX, so it'll convert members, boards, messages, and then do a small clean up routine. Don't stop the script until it says it's all done. :P Hopefully this will fix it. As you can see, when I made the converter I did not have any speed in mind. Just a quick and dirty conversion. ;D This kind of fixes that though, and spreads the time requires over four steps.

The small forum worked just dandy, though the PMs didn't seem to show up. The big forum.... well, it's still running after two hours... Perl is using between 250 and 450 MB RAM, and has according to Sysinternals' Process Explorer made 700 million page faults. There is almost no disk activity, and the Convert.pl page is running on step three, the two previous successfully completed.

I'll post when I know more.

2h 30min into the process Perl begins writing to a file simply called .txt in Messages, and five minutes later I get the following error message from Convert.pl:

Fatal Error
Your forum cannot be converted at this time.

I don't think it ever got past the third stage.

The text file is 47MB large and seems to contain somewhat random information, though mostly posts.

Sorry about that, I messed up with the boards/posts thing.  It's now fixed.  Also PM's will now be done.  Since the others take so long, you can just do the following to try the boards/messages section:

Convert.pl?convert=vB,step=2,do=messages

Also, tell me how many rows are in your `post` database and how many rows are in the `thread` one.  The same number of rows as are in the `post` database should also be the same number of lines in that .txt file.  The reason it takes so long is because it puts it all into memory.  And actually, I just noticed a pretty large bug that would make it spend MUCH more time writing files than it should.  Now it should only write to files once, which speed things up a great bit.

Try this and see if it's faster and if it works.  It should.

Got the error again... This time the ".txt" file in Messages is 166MB big, and there are lots of 0kB files names like "Thread Closed by user* on 02-04-2005 at 12" and others where the reason someone has given for editing a message has ended up as the name of the file, containing the messages of what I assume is the original thread.

There are 207 018 entries in the "post" table in the database, and 197 136 lines in the 166 MB file. The "thread" table in the DB contains 14 780 entries.

The E-Blah Boards folder also contains some oddities. There are too many entries there which have file names with numbers far over what they should be...

I'll see if I can delete the most critical information from my big database and then upload it for you to test with. This will however have to be tomorrow's thing, since I'm now going to bed. :)

Thank you, by the way, for your effort so far. Hope you don't give up just yet though! :D

* Edited from original user name for sake of privacy

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