11-05-2023, 02:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-05-2023, 06:17 PM by MarioMaiato.)
Hello,
I had an issue recently with this very forum. I thought I would share my experience to help others facing similar situations, and illustrate the importance of good regular backups.
This site is hosted at Infinityfree.com which provides up to 3 sites (hosted websites) with "full service" setups. MySQL, Ftp, DNS, custom domains etc. All 100% with no gimmicks or add placements. It is as good as any paid web hosting service & when combined with Cloudflare DNS hosting is a very robust and secure configuration. All free too. Okay enough about that, onto the issue.
I went to access my forum after not being on for a few days, and to my surprise it was down! The Mybb error message was "Error 44" paraphrasing a little, its also said "could not locate or load MySQL extensions. There is extensive documentation about this issue which all leads to changing the config.php file in Mybb to list the SQL server type as MySQLi or MySQL if the other type is listed. When I made this change from MySQL to MySQLi it caused the site to attempt to load, but had several coding errors appear on the screen. At the time I did not really understand why the coding errors were there, I assumed MySQLi is not the right setting for my site and the problem must be related to the extensions not loading as the error (44) suggested.
I went to the hosting providers KB and immediately saw that there were issues with the hosting server I was being hosted on. So I thought that my issue was related to the hosting server issues. It was not. Within hours the hosting issues were resolved but by forum was still down with the same errors.
I tried restoring the forum from a recent backup. Once this was complete the forum still had the same error (44)... how odd!
I posted a question on the hosting providers KB asking if any major changes were recently done on the hosting server. The answer was YES. They had changed with PHP from version 7.?? to the most current version 8.??.
THE WORK
I backed up the MySQL DB and all files.
I deleted the forum and deleted the MySQL database using the hosting providers provided tools, Phpmyadmin. I created a brand new empty Database with the same name as the previous one. I then installed the latest version of Mybb... A new vanilla installation. This worked. When I examined the database type detail in config.php, it in fact was MySQLi. *The installed version of myBB was not the same version as the one installed.
RESTORING TO A NEW INSTALLATION OF MYBB.
Since I would be restoring my SQL database to the new installation, I went back to the hosting provider and again deleted the database and created a new one with the same name.
Using their tool Phpmyadmin I restored the MySQL backup from a the newly created backup. This restored all of the most important data. The users, the forums, the posts, and themes.
What it did not restore was all of the physical file dependencies, like custom images, forum post images, custom avatars, and plugins. All the files are very easily restore able from the latest file backup. What is not super simple is the Plugins (the likely source of most of the problems when the PHP version changed on the server).
Since the plugins were not restored, their configuration settings need to be removed. Go to AdminCP, then Configuration. From the left side pane, choose Settings. On the center page choose Modify Settings. Choose the plugins which no longer exist and choose Options, then Delete settings Group.
Lastly, download and install new compatible plugins.
I had an issue recently with this very forum. I thought I would share my experience to help others facing similar situations, and illustrate the importance of good regular backups.
This site is hosted at Infinityfree.com which provides up to 3 sites (hosted websites) with "full service" setups. MySQL, Ftp, DNS, custom domains etc. All 100% with no gimmicks or add placements. It is as good as any paid web hosting service & when combined with Cloudflare DNS hosting is a very robust and secure configuration. All free too. Okay enough about that, onto the issue.
I went to access my forum after not being on for a few days, and to my surprise it was down! The Mybb error message was "Error 44" paraphrasing a little, its also said "could not locate or load MySQL extensions. There is extensive documentation about this issue which all leads to changing the config.php file in Mybb to list the SQL server type as MySQLi or MySQL if the other type is listed. When I made this change from MySQL to MySQLi it caused the site to attempt to load, but had several coding errors appear on the screen. At the time I did not really understand why the coding errors were there, I assumed MySQLi is not the right setting for my site and the problem must be related to the extensions not loading as the error (44) suggested.
I went to the hosting providers KB and immediately saw that there were issues with the hosting server I was being hosted on. So I thought that my issue was related to the hosting server issues. It was not. Within hours the hosting issues were resolved but by forum was still down with the same errors.
I tried restoring the forum from a recent backup. Once this was complete the forum still had the same error (44)... how odd!
I posted a question on the hosting providers KB asking if any major changes were recently done on the hosting server. The answer was YES. They had changed with PHP from version 7.?? to the most current version 8.??.
THE WORK
I backed up the MySQL DB and all files.
I deleted the forum and deleted the MySQL database using the hosting providers provided tools, Phpmyadmin. I created a brand new empty Database with the same name as the previous one. I then installed the latest version of Mybb... A new vanilla installation. This worked. When I examined the database type detail in config.php, it in fact was MySQLi. *The installed version of myBB was not the same version as the one installed.
RESTORING TO A NEW INSTALLATION OF MYBB.
Since I would be restoring my SQL database to the new installation, I went back to the hosting provider and again deleted the database and created a new one with the same name.
Using their tool Phpmyadmin I restored the MySQL backup from a the newly created backup. This restored all of the most important data. The users, the forums, the posts, and themes.
What it did not restore was all of the physical file dependencies, like custom images, forum post images, custom avatars, and plugins. All the files are very easily restore able from the latest file backup. What is not super simple is the Plugins (the likely source of most of the problems when the PHP version changed on the server).
Since the plugins were not restored, their configuration settings need to be removed. Go to AdminCP, then Configuration. From the left side pane, choose Settings. On the center page choose Modify Settings. Choose the plugins which no longer exist and choose Options, then Delete settings Group.
Lastly, download and install new compatible plugins.