CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

It was 4.2.7 when I started, now it's 4.2.8! Ive been stuck for a while ;-)

The error revolves around CiviCRM seeing a variable that suggests an older database is being installed over a newer one. Tried commenting out - no dice ... led to further fatal errors. Somewhere along the line Joomla seems to have recorded multiple installs of CiviCRM, with one very old version staying in the system, albeit disabled (and code long gone). A bit of a mess!

Have now completely uninstalled CiviCRM and installed 4.2.8 as clean install. Still saw quite a few errors concerning versions in Upgrade.php when running with debugging on, and had to comment out a few lines of code in Upgrade.php, however the DB upgrade script eventually ran, and the install appears to work.

Now need to find a way to safely get my 4.1.2 DB data into 4.2.7 manually. I've tried that before, and it led me back into the constant problems of the upgrade dying when I tried to run the upgrade script again.

Any ideas on a safe way to do this?

Thanks Lobo, really appreciate your help. I guess I've been trying to get a clean install, but I'm obviously missing something.

Yesterday I:
1.Completely uninstalled CiviCRM using Joomla uninstall method.
2.Ensured CiviCRM MySQL tables deleted completely.
3.Ensured CiviCRM files gone completely.
4.Uploaded/installed fresh version of 4.2.8
5.After install of 4.2.8, required 'upgrade' of database.
6.Upgrade ran, but with errors...Commenting out lines allowed install to complete, but obviously not in ideal way.

Today I:
1. Did manual import of 4.2.1 tables containing real data from backup SQL.
2. Ran upgrade script again to upgrade 4.2.1 database to 4.2.8
3. Upgrade ran with errors.

4.2.8 now runs after a fashion, but CiviContribute reports it is 'unavailable'. Main 'live search' from dashboard produces PHP errors.

This is all being done on a backup server obviously, and I can roll back to pre-upgrade status at any time.

Assuming the upgrade I've 'forced' through is no good because of something I failed to remove or delete, what would you recommend I would do to enable a completely fresh/clean/safe install of 4.2.8, followed by a successful import of the data that needs to be preserved?

I have contracted some contractors for quotes, although seeing as I'm a contractor myself - I kind of want to get this done in house!

Yeah - that could be the root of the problem. The 'fresh install' behaved like an upgrade, and asked for the DB upgrade script to be run.

So in other words, my uninstall was not complete. Given that DB tables removed, admininstator/components/com_civicrm/ removed and /components/com_civicrm/ removed - what else could be polluting the system that's preventing me getting to a clean state?

FYI - finally found a solution.

CiviCRM logging was enabled on the site, which should be disabled before upgrading. However the error reporting functions for some reason were not/are not working, so I never got the message to switch off logging, resulting in repeated failed upgrades. The log tables in the database were also adding another level of complexity to things. Table foreign key restraints, undeleted data and the rest were just adding additional levels of confusion trying to nail down the real root cause.

Switching off logging after I'd finally managed to echo the errors so I could read them resulted in a successful upgrade, although there were still a few SQL errors during the upgrade - but that may have just been a result of the fact I had Joomla debugging switched on.

Any idea why CiviCRMs 'fatal' function would not echo errors?

Many thanks to all who helped.