Discusware Version: 4.10.1 (03/14/2007) --> SMF Version: 2.0.9
DiscusConvert version 1.0.5 (installed from https://randemsystems.com/scripts/downloadit.php?filename=DiscusConverter.zip)
The required forum files were extracted from a fresh, full Discusware backup and are installed in the default tree under C:\Discusware
Discusware
Discusware/discus
Discusware/discus/messages
Discusware/discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn
Discusware/discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn/secure
Discusware/discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn/tree.txt
Discusware/discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn/users.txt
I have tried this procedure on Windows XP and Windows 7 and get the same results. The following occurs regardless of any values entered in the Discus Conversion interface - including the root directory C:\Discusware.
When I click on'Convert' I get three popup dialogs in sequence:
[76 - GetFileData() Path not found]
[Redrect file not found - C:\Program Files\DiscusConvert\Docs\Redirect.html]
(I note that the Docs directory does not exist.)
[Done]
This creates the following folders and files (all empty):
SMF
SMF/Output
SMF/Output/attachments
SMF/Output/InternalLinks.txt
SMF/Output/Log.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Attachments.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Boards.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Categories.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_MemberGroups.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Members.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Messages.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_NotifyLog.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_Topics.txt
SMF/Output/SMF_TopicsLog.txt
redirect
redirect/discus
redirect/discus/messages
After numerous attempts I then created a simple Redirect.html file (unlikely to be valid but worth a try) and tried again. This time I got different error dialogs and still no conversions.
[53- DiscusProcessDiscusMainBoardFile() - File not found]
[9 - DiscusProcessDiscusTreeFile() - Subscript out of range]
[Done]
I have copied all of the discus_admin (the backup 'admin_dir') contents into discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn so nothing should be missing. I don't understand exactly what DiscusMainBoardFile might be or where it should go.
Rather than feel my way blindly towards a result I was hoping someone could give me some advice and guidance.
Thanks.
Aloha Ned,
I don't know if you have the instructions for this conversion but if you do not here they are:
Now all the files are html files yes? Let me know if this helps any or if we can be of assistance.
NOTE: take notice of the rename of the folder part regarding the numbers.
An example of the redirect.html file is attached. All it does is redirect a page to somewhere else (one topic to another)
Thank you very much for your prompt response.
I thought I had already read that PDF closely but evidently missed a few subtle points. I appreciate your willingness to assist me. (I must be one of the last people wanting to migrate from DiscusWare.)
After renaming the discus_admin_nnnnnnnnn directory to discus_admin_3222911694 I have proceeded a little further. Now I get the single dialog error
[76 - DiscusReadUserFile() - Path not found]
I can only guess that message refers to the master user account file. As I have a discus_admin/users.txt file I copied it to discus_admin_3222911694/user.txt to match the documentation but that hasn't eliminated the error.
I am curious about a few things; I'm not sure if they are relevant to my difficulties.
* My Discusware install has a 'discus_admin' directory. There is no numbered directory as mentioned in the conversion document. Is this likely to be significant?
* After renaming the discus_admin directory and clicking 'Convert' the discus_admin_nnnnnnnnn directory was re-created. Is this deliberate and if so, why?
* The number 3222911694 intrigues me: what is its purpose and is it significant in some way? Might I need a different number for my Discusware release (4.10.1)?
The number (3222911694) is only relevant to the Discus installation and does not matter in the conversion. The discus_admin directory is only relevant to administrative function on the discus board which will not be translated only the data will be converted.
The [76 - DiscusReadUserFile() - Path not found] error is from the Users.txt (not user.txt) file not being found at the appropriate location which is under the discus main folder where the tree.txt file is also found. This would be the \Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn folder location.
This utility does not have all the bells and whistles of error handling and such for it was not seen as being utilized a lot.
I have placed copies of Users.txt (and User.txt - just for laughs) into every input directory specified in the Converter's dialog:
C:\Discusware\discus\messages\User.txt
C:\Discusware\discus\messages\Users.txt
C:\Discusware\discus\User.txt
C:\Discusware\discus\Users.txt
C:\Discusware\discus_admin_3222911694\secure\User.txt
C:\Discusware\discus_admin_3222911694\secure\Users.txt
C:\Discusware\discus_admin_3222911694\User.txt
C:\Discusware\discus_admin_3222911694\Users.txt
C:\Discusware\User.txt
C:\Discusware\Users.txt
Still the Converter fails to find the file. I get the same error regardless of primary path (C:\Discusware or any other path, existent or not), or the case of the file name (Users.txt or users.txt).
76 - DiscusReadUserFile() - Path not found
I thought for a while it was permissions (in Windows 7) but a non-existent path (e.g. C:\blah) and its subdirectories is created happily after clicking 'Convert'. The same happens on Windows XP.
To affirm that it's the file and not its content that's causing the trouble, here is an example entry from out of the 700+ users in it.
ned-ludd:WHCl/f8fubmdZ:me@ned-ludd.com:Ned Ludd:1:16:1318273200:0:1326884750:/general/
Here's an odd thing: if I copy the Users.txt into the discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn directory that is created by the Converter, the error changes:
53 - DiscusProcessDiscusTreeFile() - File not found
Which is promising but if I copy the tree.txt file to discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn I get back to an earlier set of errors when I created my own Redirect.html:
53 - DiscusProcessDiscusMainBoardFile() - File not found
9 - DiscusProcessDiscusTreeFile() - Subscript out of range
Copying the entire secure directory to discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn (so it is identical to discus_admin_3222911694) returns me to the DiscusReadUserFile error.
I feel I'm going in circles here. If I knew what 'DiscusMainBoardFile' was I might understand this last error better.
You are missing the main directive... The folders must be nnnnnnnnnn as described NOT the number. If you use the folder name with the number in it. It will NEVER work.
NOTE: Rename discus_admin_3222911694 to discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn in order for this to work. NOT numbers but literal "nnnnnnnnnn". This is your source location.
Step 2 in the instructions:
2. Download your Discusware 4.10 files to your local computer using FTP. We use FireFTP but you can use any FTP program that you are familiar with. You can also use your browsers FTP functionality. The files you need are in the following locations. You will need to change the numbers on your folder to nnnnnnnnnn for the converter to work. Your folder structure on your computer should look something like this. It closely mirrors what you have on your host system. The converter will automatically create these folders if they do not exist.
This version should use either user.txt or users.txt
Thank you very much for that.
I tried all of the PDF instructions with the numbered and non-numbered directory and got the same results. I have just repeated the process from scratch with a fresh FTP download of the entire forum tree and get the same failures. This is the current layout for conversion:
discus/messages
discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn/secure
I think my problem may stem from the fact that my directory layout doesn't seem to conform to the standard but instead resides in a subdirectory ('/forum') from the domain. These are the exact directories on my site:
cgi-bin/forum
discus_admin/secure
forum/messages
I strongly suspect I'll have to munge the URLs to bring the 'forum/messages' directory and all file contents (URLs, etc) up one level to make this work. If a standard install also has a numbered discus_admin tree I may have to munge everything to suit that as well.
Thanks again, I appreciate your patience.
When you start the converter the defaults are exactly where the program expects the data. Make sure you have exactly10 n's. The very same as in the default.
c:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn
is exactly that. This is why there are no browse buttons so as to keep it simple. That was the theory at least...
Take a snapshot of your folder tree then post it. If you like I can offer you an FTP upload folder on our server so we can attempt the conversion here.
Here is my current directory tree for conversion:
F:\Discusware
F:\Discusware\discus
F:\Discusware\discus\messages
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\15
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\16
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\16947
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\17
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\30
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\31
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\3309
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\3568
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\40
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\695
F:\Discusware\discus\messages\thumbnails
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\1018
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\11406
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\3767
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\385
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\388
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\4275
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\4276
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\4278
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\5302
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\595
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\6290
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\7251
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure\8922
F:\Discusware\redirect
F:\Discusware\redirect\discus
F:\Discusware\redirect\discus\messages
F:\Discusware\SMF
F:\Discusware\SMF\Output
F:\Discusware\SMF\Output\attachments
All URLs in all files have been converted to lift them from the subdirectory ("/forum") to the site root ("/"). I'm still getting the 53 - DiscusProcessDiscusMainBoardFile() File not found error.
Here (attached?) is a screenshot of my converter dialog. (I have obfuscated the 'Discus Website' and 'SMF Forum Addr' values. No amount of trying with endless tiny variations of the real URLs has elicited any change in behaviour so I'm guessing that's not part of the problem.)
(//)
As the forum has a large amount of fairly confidential information on it I'm currently reluctant to leap at your kind offer to attempt a conversion for me. I have to continue trying for a result at my end until all possibilities are exhausted.
In the secure folder it is looking for the board-topics.html file. So that would be in your folder F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure
This may help with error messages...
"In the secure folder it is looking for the board-topics.html file. So that would be in your folder F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure"
BINGO.
In my install that file is in the messages folder. After copying it across, the Conversion runs. Thanks!
After the last topic is reported to have been converted I get an error popup: 62 - GetFileData() - Input past end of file
Is this expected or might something else be missing?
Also, (and I think I read about this somewhere) it hasn't converted subtopics below the top level. I'll have to rearrange things on the existing forum for the move but that's not going to be a major issue. I'm planning to bring them up to the top on the new forum anyway.
I'll probably clone the Discusware site on another web server and use the Move Topic function on the clone, to avoid risking catastrophe on the still-live forum. (The affected subtopics are quite large.)
My next step after that: importing it to the SMF database. Watch this space.
Progress... This will tell you which file it is having an issue with...
After dropping that EXE in place of the previous version and running it, I get Run-time error '429': ActiveX component can't create object and then it crashes. Not being a Windows person I've little idea what to do about this error.
I'm also getting no obvious attachments included in the conversion output. I guess that will be something to do with the EOF error not letting the process continue after converting the messages.
Not sure what happened it runs here. I will re-attach the whole install.
Attachments would not be obvious. The file names would be MD5 encoded in the attachments folder.
After a weekend of tidying up the forum I retried the conversion. The last error seen on Friday recurred:
62 - GetFileData() - f:\Discusware\20150112\SMF\Output\InternalLinks.txt
This happens after the last post in the least thread in the last topic is converted. After clicking 'OK' there is about a ten second pause until the last 'OK' dialog box appears.
The SMF/Output directory contains what appears to be a complete conversion of the messages but the empty output files might suggest where the conversion is failing:
Byte counts:
0 Jan 12 13:01 attachments (empty directory)
0 Jan 12 13:01 InternalLinks.txt
351002 Jan 12 13:03 Log.txt
0 Jan 12 13:01 SMF_Attachments.txt
4102 Jan 12 13:03 SMF_Boards.txt
205 Jan 12 13:03 SMF_Categories.txt
368 Jan 12 13:04 SMF_MemberGroups.txt
215761 Jan 12 13:04 SMF_Members.txt
20565175 Jan 12 13:04 SMF_Messages.txt
311 Jan 12 13:03 SMF_NotifyLog.txt
142492 Jan 12 13:03 SMF_Topics.txt
42209 Jan 12 13:03 SMF_TopicsLog.txt
Line counts:
0 SMF/Output/InternalLinks.txt
6792 SMF/Output/Log.txt
0 SMF/Output/SMF_Attachments.txt
34 SMF/Output/SMF_Boards.txt
6 SMF/Output/SMF_Categories.txt
7 SMF/Output/SMF_MemberGroups.txt
1662 SMF/Output/SMF_Members.txt
187317 SMF/Output/SMF_Messages.txt
32 SMF/Output/SMF_NotifyLog.txt
3332 SMF/Output/SMF_Topics.txt
3332 SMF/Output/SMF_TopicsLog.txt
There are 3392 HTML files in the Redirect tree, which matches the number of thread HTML files in the source (i.e. excluding the topic and index files). Unexpectedly, the URLs in these files all point to https://randemsystems.com, despite my having entered the appropriate 'Discus Website' and 'SMF Forum Addr' values in in the converter dialog. A typical example:
</head>
<body>
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="https://randemsystems.com/discus/logpagessc.js"> </SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="https://randemsystems.com/discus/logpagesnsc.js"> </SCRIPT>
<script>
window.location = "https://randemsystems.support//index.php?topic=3297.0";
</script>
Also, if I re-run the converter without restarting the application I get a '9 - ProcessPostsOnPage() - Subscript out of range' error.
Here is a file which eliminates randem.com from any output files but there is nowhere that places randemsystems.com in any file. The file you posted is a file itself and should not be used or should be changed if used to reflect your website. From the information in the file you posted was information that I wanted placed into every html page that would log the page for reporting purposes. You can change or eliminate the contents of that source file.
Other notes: Do you have actual attachments in your forum? I will double check on what conditions no attachment would be created.
Make sure you have "Create Attachments" Checked...
From what you say I will need to modify the Redirect files to suit my situation. I have no problem with that and can easily do it after the fact.
I do have 'Create Attachments' and 'Import Hidden Topics' ticked. Here's a quick count of the most common types of file attachments in my forum:
pdf 354
jpg 2601
png 74
doc 17
xls 3
Each attachment lives in its respective topic directory and is directly linked from its message file.
With the latest version I'm still getting the 62 - GetFileData() - F:\Discusware\20150112\SMF\Output\InternalLinks.txt - Input past end of file error.
What exactly is in this file - InternalLinks.txt
Attachments are enclosed in the following tags - <!--attachment:", "<!--/attachment-->
If found it will replace the discus website address (http://www.yourdicusaddr.com) with the Discus Root Address (c:\Discusware\) then look for the attachment in that folder location.
You would had to have downloaded the attachments from your Discus site into that folder already.
As shown in the file list in a previous post, InternalLinks.txt is an empty file created by the Conversion process. I can't tell what it's for or what the error message implies.
You said: replace the discus website address (http://www.yourdicusaddr.com) with the Discus Root Address (c:\Discusware\) then look for the attachment in that folder location.
Again, I thought I'd fallen foul of an assumption that the forum is not in a subdirectory. So I munged all HTML files to eliminate the subdirectory and again had no change in the result. Time for another rethink.
So I took your explanation completely literally and copied the entire /messages/ and /secure/ directories up from /discus/ and /discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn/ to the F:\Discusware directory. After running the converter again I now get attachments! These are, as you said, labeled with a number and the hash of the file. There were 370 attachments created, which is awfully close to the 373 instances of "<!--attachment" I can find in the HTML source. (Identifying the hashed files for the purposes of cross-verification has been interesting.)
My working directory tree now looks like this:
F:\Discusware
F:\Discusware\discus
F:\Discusware\discus\messages
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn
F:\Discusware\discus_admin_nnnnnnnnnn\secure
F:\Discusware\messages (includes copies of all /secure subdirectories)
F:\Discusware\redirect
F:\Discusware\redirect\discus
F:\Discusware\redirect\discus\messages
F:\Discusware\SMF
F:\Discusware\SMF\Output
F:\Discusware\SMF\Output\attachments
Wondering where the inline images are I note that they appear as 2789 [ url=http://... ] URLs in the SMF_Messages.txt file. Presumably I'll have to alter all of them to reflect the new location of the forum, or leave the old forum tree in place just for the images. Luckily that's a simple task.
Overall I think I now have enough to proceed with a test of importing the data to SMF. My only concern is the continued error messages during the conversion, which leaves me in the dark as to what's not being done and hence what might be missing from the converted data.
Discus may have changed some of their directory structures somewhere between 3 and 4.10.1 but your html files should reflect where they are expected to be. When the conversion happens it just changes the http://www.yourdiscus.com to the local root folder, everything after that it uses as part of the folder structure.
I checked to see what the internallinks.txt was used for (it was a long time ago). This file was used to correct links that were in the Discus file to the new location in the SMF database. Is there a messages.txt that has been created? The Internallinks.txt was used along with that file to correct the page links so that they would work in SMF. I cannot seem to find the original conversion that I did to check fully. I will look more...
The InternalLinks.txt file is created by the conversion to be used to correct links in the output message.txt, then InternalLinks.txt is deleted. This is the process that searches for 'url=' tags to gather the data then map it to SMF's Topic URL format.
After numerous attempts from scratch I've managed to import the Converter output to my SMF database and have everything consistent.
I only managed this by hard-coding most of the 'id' field values in the import files rather than having MySQL generate them. When auto-generated I had multiple fencepost errors with ids, as well as duplicate records - the worst being the disabling of the original SMF 'admin' member, thus rendering the forum unmanageable! To avoid any duplicates of pre-existing records I simply added 1000 to every relevant id (but 999 for Topics!) Only after I'd done all of this would the forum error repairs complete.
One major disappointment (and something of a showstopper) is the complete loss of inline images. The converter strips all HTML tags from the body of a message , which includes <img> tags. I guess I'll have to munge the Discusware source to convert these into (http://<url>) tags before running the Converter, since it leaves BB code intact.
One file I ignored was the SMF_TopicsLog.txt file, because every entry - one for each id_topic - had the same id_member and id_message value. It didn't make sense and its omission doesn't seem to have caused any problem.
The attachments have been copied over but so far clicking on any attachment link returns a 404 error. I'll investigate that when I've solved the above problems.
Another puzzler: why might the second column of every Board say "<n> Redirects"? I don't understand what that signifies.
Not sure what you mean by the second column saying "<n> Redirects". Second column of what? This board was a direct conversion of a Discus board and inline images are present and working. Take a look at the url for the attachments and inline images (what does it say), it will give you a clue as to why there is a 404 error. All attachment names are taken from the database then used to locate the file in the attachments folder, it is very straight forward. The names are MD5 encoded.
As far as id's being duplicated, mySQL will not generate duplicate on an id field that is marked as autonumber or identity so I am at a loss to how you have duplicates in that field. I can only guess at most of your issues since I have not seen any of the source information...
This is the error message thrown by the 'Fix' step of of 'Find and repair any errors' using the unmodified Converter data. I'm no expert but I guess this is Composite Key duplication in mySQL.
Duplicate entry '0-31' for key 2
File: /home/smf-test/Sources/RepairBoards.php
Line: 1486It's a pity it doesn't tell me which table this is in but my focus is on getting a result so I didn't spend too much time searching for that duplicate. All I know is that the error went away after I hard-coded all the ids. I've no problem with this fairly easy fix and it gives me greater control over the data anyway.
The 'Redirect' items appear in the main forum page. I attach a screenshot in case you can give me some insight into what it might mean. I'm more curious than concerned so don't fret if you can't explain it.
I converted all the <img src...> URLs in the source HTML to (//) tags and the Converted output now includes the original URLs as desired. I'm content with this solution. If you're at all interested, here's the rough and ready command I used to convert the image tags.
find . -name "*.html" -exec sed -i 's#<img src="\(http://.[^<]*/messages/.[^<]*\)" alt="\([^<]*\)">#[img alt=\2]\1[/img]#g {} \;(Obviously this would need to be enhanced if I want to relocate the actual image URLs.)
Not sure what those redirects are, that is where the post counts are supposed to be. Have you run the SMF utilities on the database to recount the posts etc...