Comments on: More success converting from CommunityServer to vBulletin

By: MichaellaS

MichaellaS — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:57:33 +0000

tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!

By: mike

mike — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:15:26 +0000

im sorry its like 1.4 gig. im not sure if that is considered too big.
if so, then i would not want to burden you with the job or the hassle.
i will see if i can get a free host or some other way. if not i will seek your help with that regard.
i really appreciate the offer

By: brian

brian — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:49:45 +0000

Hah, and all from blog comments.

Hostgator doesn’t support MSSQL. How big is your database? If it’s not too big I may be able to it on a shared hosting account I have temporarily, so you can do your vBulletin migration and then we can be done with it.

Shoot me an email with more info: bdemarzo@gmail.com.

By: mike

mike — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:56:16 +0000

Thanks Brian,
i’ve gotten more help from you than hours of digging on google, and begging on Vbulletin forum.

my vbulletin is hosted with Hostgator.

By: brian

brian — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:31:35 +0000

The .bak file is a Microsoft SQL backup (’dump’) file. That file needs to be restored to an MSSQL server that can be directly accessed by your vBulletin Impex web server.

Impex does not connect directly to the SQL file — it must connect to the SQL server which is hosting the database (the same way it connects to a MySQL database).

Does your vBulletin hosting plan also have MSSQL support? If so, you can probably restore it there, and with luck your host can probably help you out restoring it. Heck, maybe the vBulletin guys can help.

If still lost, let me know who your vBulletin web host is, and I’ll do some quick research.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:28:27 +0000

that does help Brian,

i never thought about the restriction to connect only to internal ip’s.

now i have a .bak copy of the mssql database .
can i convert it to a format that would be accessible/readable ? and what format would that be? .mdb, .mdf ? do you know what format/extension was your MSSQL file that Impex could connect to?
do you know any converter tools?

By: brian

brian — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:51:01 +0000

Your vBulletin Impex utility must be configred with the connection information to your CommunityServer MSSQL database — i.e., the database server IP address, database name, username, and password used by your CommunityServer forums.

Note that you also need to make sure that your vBulletin web server (i.e. Impex) can access the remote SQL database. Some web hosting companies restrict access to their SQL servers to internal IP addresses only. If this is the case, you need to find a temporary place to host your MSSQL database in order to make it accessible to your new forums.

Hope this helps!

By: mike

mike — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:55:28 +0000

you were right about VB support when it comes to CS , they dont offer much help.

i was wondering if you can she any light as to the following post i posted on vb fourms and have not yet gotten answer.

“i am a newbie when it comes to this, and i dont have any experience with Windows hosting, databases, etc.

but here is what i have in hand and need your help step-by-step:

- i have my VB site running on a Hostgator Linux server
- i have my Community Server running on a 1and1.com Windows server.
- i have a backup copy of the Community Server database in .bak format (1.4 GB size) produced via the database back system on 1and1.com
- i have successfully uploaded the needed Impex files and a link shows up in my VB admin control panel for Impex.
- i have configured the impexconfig.php as best as i know (can provide code if needed)

- i was told for the import to happen, the source (CS) needs to be on the same server as the vB database, i.e: ‘localhost’. so i have uploaded the whole 1.4 gig of the .bak to my linux host under domain.com/forums folder.

- i have tried renaming the .bak file as .mdf (the format that is on windows server) and .mdb but nothing has worked. dont laugh, cause i dont know if its the right way of going about handling the database back up file.

… so when i click on the import in admin CP, im getting error:

PHP Code:
Warning: mssql_connect() [function.mssql-connect]: Unable to connect to server: localhost in [path]/impex/db_mysql.php on line 57

Warning: mssql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MS SQL-Link resource in [path]/impex/db_mysql.php on line 193

what am i doing wrong?
what should i do?
what file format should the source database be?”

thanks
mike

By: brian

brian — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:20:04 +0000

The migration does work — though there’s logistic issues I need to resolve before doing this (most notably, writing hooks from other web sites to integrate with the forums).

The attachments migrated, but they wouldn’t open after migrated. This could be due to data conversion from Windows binary files to MySQL binary columns — I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, whatever (limited) guidance I did get from vBulletin is over — they said they are on to other projects. Not that they did much anyway…

As it is now, my modified migration handles forums (including forum hierarchy), threads, posts, private messages. I am doing another test migration now.

Final note — unless the vBulletin guys integrate my modified code into their ImpEx utility, I am not sure if I can distribute it (licensing violations). You may want to contact them about this, asking if they would incorporate my changes with their master builds.

By: mike

mike — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:36:51 +0000

as per this post your were to change from CS to vBulletin.

i saw your forum is still with CS.
did it not work for you? i need to do a switch myself and am not finding much info on it.
thank
smike