Phorum Support Forums - 5.1 Phorum Support

Legacy problem: phorum5.1.25 on Debian 12 (no replies)

orinoco — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 05:16:04 -0500

Disclaimer: yes, I know that 5.1.25 is outdated and depreciated, but I'm stuck with it as I will explain.
yes, I know that I am an irresponsible server admin to others, but between upgrade hell, data loss abyss and potential legacy security issues I'm on the legacy side. If you want to help me despite all this, read on.

After many years I couldn't ignore the upgrade problem of my Debian server anymore and I will switch from Debian 9 to Debian 12 and I try to move my legacy phorum forums to it. With 5.2.x forums this worked almost flawlessly. Another phorum 5.1.25 (low traffic) I could upgrade to 5.2.23. But one 5.1.25 is causing problems. As I realized that 5.1.25 does not work (just blank install page after configuring config.php) on Debian 12 LAMP, even with php5.6-fpm, I also tried to upgrade to 5.2.23 but failed the step after

Quote

Upgrading from patch level 2007100800 to 2007100801

I only get the header of the admin.php upgrade page, it breaks in the second HTML-table.

Now my questions:
Is there a way to find out what breaks the upgrade?
Is there a way to run phorum5.1.25 on Debian 12?
I guess it's a database problem. mariadb 10.1.48-0+deb9u2 on Debian 9 works. mariadb 10.11.6-0+deb12u1 on Debian 12 doesn't. Which version still works with 5.1.25?

I will continue testing, but if someone knows a quick solution it would save much time and nerves. Thanks.

P.S. I brutally skipped mysql-patch 2007100802.php. It just renews the thread info. Does not seem to be necessary. At least I got all my phorum-forums databases in ver5.2.23, "just" loosing templates and modules ... well maybe I can save a bit of them. Is probably the better solution as this works with current mariadb version of Debian 12 and at least php7.4 (php8.2 seem to work to but the default template is broken; maybe not much needed to fix this)

Possible to Purge Stale Files from a command line? (no replies)

Mark Fresh — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 11:25:30 -0500

version 5.1.25

When I run Purge Stale Files on the admin interface I get Internal Server Error

Error log says:
Premature end of script headers: admin.php, referer: [www.sitename.co.uk]

Is it possible to run Purge Stale Files from a command line to reduce the overhead?

Thanks
Mark

archive forums (6 replies)

Michael Horton — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:06:48 -0600

Is there a way to aechive old forums in a seperate area or is only way to make them READ ONLY? I'd rather archive then delete old forums

Can i edit privacy of forums (no replies)

Rigel Bernard — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 10:49:00 -0600

Can i create a private forum where my clients can send me samples of coin images.

Getting a blank page on an upgraded Phorum (1 reply)

henny — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:12:07 -0500

Hi,

I have used a phorum for my students already for quite some while. Originally it was in Korean but since there are no language files anymore I changed it to English. However I haven't used it for quite a while (nor did my students) and now when I try to take a look at it I understand why. All it gives is a blank page. When I try to go the admin page, I can login but after that I get a blank page as well.

When I look at the log files I see the following (don't have that kind of problems with other phorums on the same server though)

[Tue Sep 06 04:31:19 2011] [error] [client 58.123.210.146] PHP Warning: is_dir() [function.is-dir]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/) is not within the allowed path(s): (/storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/:/tmp/) in /storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/phorum-5.2.11/include/cache/file.php on line 209, referer: [www.student.henny-savenije.pe.kr]
[Tue Sep 06 04:31:19 2011] [error] [client 58.123.210.146] PHP Warning: is_dir() [function.is-dir]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/) is not within the allowed path(s): (/storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/:/tmp/) in /storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/phorum-5.2.11/include/cache/file.php on line 209, referer: [www.student.henny-savenije.pe.kr]
[Tue Sep 06 04:31:19 2011] [error] [client 58.123.210.146] PHP Warning: is_dir() [function.is-dir]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/) is not within the allowed path(s): (/storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/:/tmp/) in /storage/vhosts/student.henny-savenije.pe.kr/httpdocs/phorum-5.2.11/include/cache/file.php on line 209, referer: [www.student.henny-savenije.pe.kr]
[Tue Sep 06 04:31:25 2011] [error] [client 58.123.210.146] ModSecurity: Audit log: Failed to create subdirectories: /var/asl/data/audit/20110906/20110906-0431 (Permission denied) [hostname "www.student.henny-savenije.pe.kr"] [uri "/phorum-5.2.11/index.php"] [unique_id "TmWF-X8AAAEAADZEdwYAAAAI"]

Any help is appreciated.

Problems with Chrome and Safari logging in (6 replies)

simgio — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:45:57 -0500

Hello support,
recently we have noticed that Chrome and Safari will not let our users log into our Phorum. Firefox is working fine.
Is there anything that can be done by yourselves or us to deal with the browser incompatibility issues please.
Thank you
Simone

Can I send a mail to all registered users (4 replies)

wamukota — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:16:36 -0600

I am running version 5.1.25 and will move the forum to a new host as well as update the forum to the latest release.

I would like to mass-mail the users about my intentions, but I cannot see an option to send out a mail to everyone. Is it possible from withing Phorum?

TIA,

Alain

Reducing the size of the DB, especially the phorum_files table (1 reply)

Mark Fresh — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 05:41:20 -0600

Hi

I'm running 5.1.25 and I want to upgrade to the latest version 5.2.16, the problem is that my database is so big that I can't run it in my test environment to make sure the upgrade will work properly. So these are the largest tables on my live site,

phorum_files 13,076 rows - 2.4GB
phorum_message 515,505 rows - 366MB
phorum_pm_messages 270,730 rows - 460MB
phorum_search 515,504 rows - 345MB
phorum_user_newflag 9,708,793 rows - 517MB

Is there any way I can reduce them so the db is small enough to fit onto my test environment (about 1GB). I have purged the stale files already. I did try deleting some old messages but I have a feeling they may have left any associated files in the DB.

Thanks in advance

Mark

Inherited Phorum - Help required (2 replies)

alpinemauve — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 09:05:11 -0600

I've inherited the forum as part of a large website.

Its all older version 5.0.13a and will require an update to the latest version without all the old files and usernames being lost.
However before that I will need access to the admin panel - which I can't

I do have access to the phorum as a moderator, but not the full administrator and the site is being plagued with Spam at the moment from the same person/IP so a block is required or an approval of new members. So I can delete the messages straight away but would like to stop new ones once and for all.

I also have full ftp access to the files and database.

Can I determine the admin details - either as an email that could be sent through to the original administrator or the details be changed so I become the new administrator?
The former moderator cannot be contacted.

rss feed with topic name (1 reply)

tos — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:20:24 -0500

hi - i am running version 5.1.25 of phorum.. how can i get the rss feed to carry the name of the topic instead of the title of the post?

please help.

tos

Error with search results in (2 replies)

proforums — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:28:33 -0500

I turned the PHP error settings to on and started receiving this message at the top of the search results page in 5.1.10:

Notice: Undefined index: mysql_use_ft in /home/httpd/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/phorums/include/db/mysql.php on line 927

Any idea what might be causing this and what I can do to resolve the error?

Thanks,
Chad

I can't view phorum as a guest... (2 replies)

masterbeu — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:25:06 -0500

Dear my supporters,

I'm a newbie and I have just used Phorum recently, and got a problem as follow :
- I 've already created a database (hiring the host...)
- I finished config the Phorum 5.2 as the manual said but when i view the forum , it always ask for the username & password of the database
(pls go in : www.mtpacking.vn/forum/index.php for reviewing)

pls give me some advices,

Thank you very much.

TMai (from VietNam)

Phorum 5.1.25 barfed on itself, upgrade isn't going so well (4 replies)

TheKorn — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 10:30:42 -0500

I've been running phorum 5.1.25 for eons now. OK, so I've gotten a little (lot) lax on updating the phorum software.

All was running well until about a week ago, and then it started barfing on itself with a ton of "undefined index" messages:

[www.pinballmafia.net]

If I run the sanity checks,they all fly through as green. But obviously I have a problem, I just don't know where. It looks like something needs to be rebuilt, but if anyone could give me a push in the right direction, I'd be tremendously grateful!

In an attempt to solve the problem, I decided to do a trial upgrade to the current version of phorum (5.2.15a). I copied the phorum database to an entirely new database to start, just in case things didn't go perfectly right. Then I installed the new phorum software in a separate directory structure, and updated conf.php to point to the new database.

I hit the admin page, and went through 40 upgrade steps OK. After that, I did the sanity check, and it passes all green.

However, when I try and use it, I get... el zilcho.

I guess I'm stuck; I can't get my old install of phorum working, and a new install with the old database isn't happy either. Just to be clear, I'm absolutely 100% not surprised that the upgrade didn't work, I was just hoping that maybe some magic would happen and phorum would heal itself.

So I'm looking for options; either fixing the old one or getting the new version to run are both acceptable options. (Or fixing the old one, with the proviso that I need to upgrade, is also cool.)

Thanks!

Anyway to increase the size of the PM box (2 replies)

Michael Horton — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:26:04 -0500

Right now it seems to be set at 25. Can I go to say 50?

SOLVED: Links shown different in threads than in overview (4 replies)

Thorsten Weiss — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:11:45 -0600

Hi together,

What I have right now: no links are underlined. Not in the startpage, not when entering a forum with all the threads in overview, and also not in threads, when a user posts a link e.g. to an external page.
What I want: the links users write in their posts should be underlined / bold / marked with a dart or whatever.

I tried something with the stylesheet but just found an entry to edit "a" and "a visited". When i change the settings all links (even every headline) will apply this.

Is there a way to create an entry for just marking links in posts different to other links? I hope you know what I mean. If not I will make some screenshots.

Thanks in advance!

problem on changing database used with a forum (5 replies)

webmaster — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:08:07 -0600

I need to move a forum from one database to a new one and I've hit a strange problem.
Both MySQL databases are part of the same web hosting account.
Using php scripts provided by our web host I copied all the Phorum tables from the one database to the other and, as far as I can see, this process went without errors.
I then copied the ......\phorum\include\db\config.php file, and in the copy I changed the database information (name, server, user and password) to the values for the new database and uploaded this to the web server, deleted the old config.php file and renamed the new file as config.php.
The I tested the forum using Firefox (set with a tab that remembered my login details) and found that I could browse the forum and posted a new message. So I assumed that all was OK, but.....
Following a problem reported by a user I found:
- using a different browser I could not log in with the normal log-in page (a completely blank page was returned)
- using Firefox, if I logged out I could not sign in again
- shutting down and restarting Firefox and going to the correct tab resulted in being logged in correctly to the forum again.
The above was repeated a few times, even including rebooting my PC.

I then just changed the config.php file to point back to the original database and everything works correctly with no login problems.

The problem does not seem to be with the config.php file - when logged in, a connection to the database was clearly made.
The problem does not seem to be with the new database - when logged in, no problem was noted.
The problem does not seem to be with the login details - these have not changed.

The first database runs on MySQL 4.0 and the second MySQL 5.0, but I do not remember the phorum installations making any distinction between the versions and when logged in to the new database not problems were found. So I don't think the MySQL version change can be the problem.

So does anyone have any idea what may have gone wrong?

Editor tools (no replies)

hamre — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:24:28 -0600

Problem solved.

I also used the Smarturl Mod v0.3 and that was in conflict with editor tools because it tried to create a link when it found a http:// adress. :(

Can't login (1 reply)

john62 — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:34:32 -0600

I have just moved my phorum to another host, but now I am able to login to admin but not in to phorum index, other users are unable to login also. Have I missed something?

Problem moving phorum. (5 replies)

john62 — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 07:29:49 -0600

Hello,

I'm trying to move my phorum onto another server using bigdump and a gz.sql file. It creates the tables in the database but the tables are empty, any ideas, please?

User Avatar module doesn't work (1 reply)

farang — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:45:10 -0600

I've followed the readme.txt instructions for user_avatar 2.2.0 meticulously, but still cannot get it to work. Uploading files is enabled, I've uploaded allowed image file types within the size constraints, I can see them in Edit My Files, but under Avatar Options in the Control Center, I get No Avatar:

Any ideas? Using Phorum v5.1.22

TIA

how to give focus to the subject on reply? (1 reply)

farang — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:15:24 -0600

when posting a new topic, the subject line is given focus automatically (ie the cursor is placed into the subject text box)

however, the subject line is not given focus when replying to a post

how can I give focus to the subject on replies?

ITA

change user name colors? (1 reply)

farang — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:20:17 -0600

hi,

I'd like users to see their own user names displayed in a different color from everyone else's names in the thread list, so they can spot their own threads at a glance.

it might also be nice if users could also see the user names of those in their buddy list in a different color than everyone else.

any ideas on how this might be possible?

TIA

how to eliminate "IP Logged" next to user names? (2 replies)

farang — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:26:43 -0600

Hi,

I'd like to hide the "IP Logged" message that appears after user names on posts. Actually, I'd like to remove the entire parenthetical that appears after user names, not just replace "IP Logged" with some other string, or an empty string .

However, I still want admins/mods to be able to see user IP addresses next to their names

Any ideas?

TIA

merge threads (3 replies)

Michael Horton — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:00:33 -0600

I've searched this topic and cant seem to find an answer. I want to merge a thread. I am the admin so I click on merge thread link at left of message. This takes me to a widow that says:

"Merge Thread with:

Now go to the thread which should be merged with the selected thread and select 'Merge Thread' again."

So how do I get back to the thread I want to merge with, without hitting the back button on my browser? when I do I lose the window and the option to merge a thread. Do I open a separate window? Very frustrating and not intuitive I must say.

Un stick a sticky (2 replies)

Michael Horton — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:48:26 -0500

I cant seem to un-stick a sticky, meaning change it from a sticky to a normal post. The sticky was created by a moderator who no longer is around so as the admin, should I not be able to change it? All I can do it seems is have the option of announcement or sticky after clicking Edit Post. I simply want the thread to become a normal thread.

Deleted admin account, now I cannot login. (3 replies)

proforums — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:57:18 -0500

I started getting some very strange messages when I logged into my admin account and it looks like someone may be trying to hack into the admin section. There was text inserted into each admin page that had my admin username and a bunch of other code on it so I deleted the account not realizing that it would lock me out of the admin section with no way of getting back in. Any suggestions on getting back into the admin section without doing a refresh of the database?

I plan to upgrade to 5.2 as soon as I can get the current versions of PHP and MySQL on my server.

Warning: main(./include/lang//../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../tmp/1f87a7ed569e6f5f823eb7d7b1edb243/user/c4ca/4238/a0b9/2382/0dcc/509a/6f75/849b/data.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/httpd/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/phorums/include/admin/header.php on line 29

Warning: main(): Failed opening './include/lang//../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../../tmp/1f87a7ed569e6f5f823eb7d7b1edb243/user/c4ca/4238/a0b9/2382/0dcc/509a/6f75/849b/data.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear') in /home/httpd/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/phorums/include/admin/header.php on line 29

Thanks,
Chad

Personal Messages Table Width (1 reply)

shawn y. — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:58:41 -0500

I'm having some trouble with formatting one of the pages in my Phorum 5.1 PM list. Everything else lines up great on all of the other pages, but this one is off. (See included photo.) If anyone could help me out with advice on what to change, I would appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

p.s. Sorry about the tasteless banner. It's horrible. One of the users made it and I told him I'd put it up...

Pruning attachments SQL in 5.0 (7 replies)

Skye N. — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:55:09 -0500

Hello, I'm running a very large Phorum 5.0.x installation... I'm going to upgrade it to 5.2 soon, but I'd like to prune some of the attachments in the database so that the upgrade goes faster (if any attachment conversion is done during upgrade) and also for disk space/bandwidth reasons.

Can I just delete them directly from the files table?

Thanks
-Skye

[code="sql"]
mysql> select count(file_id) from p5_files;
+----------------+
| count(file_id) |
+----------------+
| 62804 |
+----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> desc p5_files;
+--------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| file_id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| user_id | int(11) | NO | | 0 | |
| filename | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
| filesize | int(11) | NO | | 0 | |
| file_data | mediumtext | NO | | NULL | |
| add_datetime | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| message_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | 0 | |
+--------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

[/code]

Visual divider in message list between sticky and discussions? (2 replies)

Marian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:14:08 -0500

Users of my 5.1.25 forum asked for a visual divider between the sticky/announcement threads and the discussion threads.

So far, I have used a "----------------------------------" subject (with manipulated datestamp so this thread will always be the oldest / lowest sticky of all stickies: [www.faltboot.de]

For usability and readability reasons, I'd like a better divider (such as an empty row, a 3px border etc.).

Is there a way to manipulate list.tpl?

Thanks,
Marian

Is 5.1.25 Worth the Trouble? (3 replies)

McCrockett — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:15:01 -0500

Hello, I have an old, old template I made several years ago. I'm just now getting ready to make a new website - and I'm wondering if it would be worth it to install Phorum 5.1.25 just so I can use that old template. What are the cons?

Also, how difficult would it be to create a new template if I decided to install the latest version of Phorum? What are the main benefits of the latest version of Phorum over the older v 5.1.25?

Thanks for any help.