[Discussion] Which phpBB does this site run?

[chealer]

My friend has been hosting a forum which we migrated to phpBB more than 15 years ago. It's still powered by Debian's phpbb3 package, which was removed from Debian so many years ago that I won't even disclose our site hoping our luck miraculously continues for a few more weeks without the server being successfully hacked...

I've seen Debian 12 release again without phpBB, and we really have to take a decision at this point. On one hand, phpBB itself has visibly been revived and reportedly runs fine on modern technologies (most importantly PHP 8 ), so it would seem a shame to have to abandon it just because it's unmaintained in Debian. On the other hand, we have very limited resources and don't wish to manage it by hand.

I can see that forums.debian.net seems to be healthy and can't help wondering how it does it? Which package powers this instance?

[sunrat]

Board version: 3.3.10
I think it is installed directly from the phpBB website. There are a number of config tweaks and several extensions installed. It currently runs on Bullseye at least until the release of Debian 12.1 iirc.
@donald is our main server admin. He may be able to enlighten further.

[donald]

@sunrat got it all.

@chealer, there is not much to the set up. Though you seem to be jumping large versions to get current, be sure to backup, backup, backup your database prior. After you get it current you will only need to update as newer versions or patches for phpBB are introduced, not too often but enough to keep the site up and running. There is really not much maintenance to the product. For phpBB we downloaded it, for everything else we used APT then tweaked.

[chealer]

Thank you @sunrat and donald

I assume there is no such thing as an APT package repository with a phpBB mostly compatible with Debian 12, even if unofficial?

[spot]

I'm not aware of any such apt-get package repository.

If your current system is already phpBB3, someone on the system has to have administrator rights and must be using the administrator system. Updating phpBB3 release levels and database is an automated process, you just have to backup, then accept the update invitation and it's done. Year after year of an update every few months. The point is that the database is updated alongside the release PHP framework. IMO an apt-get package update would be a strange way to perform that kind of thing.

I've always found forum migration from one supplier to another to be a soul-destroying act of self-mutilation. I'd encourage you to check the phpBB3 update documentation and maybe discuss here what sort of server access rights you have. Maybe getting the release zip file uploaded has been a stumbling block at some point. @donald's post is worth re-reading.

[chealer]

Thanks @spot

Administrator rights is not an issue for us. We also don't care about downtime due to the upgrade.

However, phpBB's update documentation mentions a 9-step process which seems significantly time-consuming, and that's just for minor updates. I also don't see how to be notified of new updates (at least those with security fixes).

[sunrat]

@chealer looks like a pretty easy 9 steps.
Updates are notified in your ACP.

[spot]

I agree it's a nine-step process, given the way it's described. Some you could write a brief script for if you were inclined, but the steps are going to be needed whatever approach any bulletin board takes.

In bare English, you do an offsite backup of the server directory for the forum, making sure you include the dumped database. That's going to be a minimum for any update mechanism, you'd do that on a server before an apt install too.

You acquire the update package in some form - essentially a wget or curl of the zip file from the provider. You unpack it and either replace your live directories with what you acquired, or their peculiar two-way swap of bringing the live site into the unpacked archive followed by the replacement of the live area with the amalgam.

There's a one-line command (step 8 in green) to bring the database modifications up to date, a one-line delete of the placemark directory (step 9) which stops the board from running while you're engaged in the update, and your site is updated and live again.

As an administrator I actually want to do all those steps myself, it means I know what's happened and that the appropriate backups really exist. You're bound to do the backups and initiate the process yourself whatever channel you adopt. All the remainder you could, if you wanted, run as a one-line cli script. Isn't that essentially equivalent to an apt process in terms of complexity?

[chealer]

Thanks @sunrat
My preference would be an instant notification though (I was thinking of an email notification).

You unpack it and either replace your live directories with what you acquired, or their peculiar two-way swap of bringing the live site into the unpacked archive followed by the replacement of the live area with the amalgam.

That's not really what phpBB documents.

As an administrator I actually want to do all those steps myself, it means I know what's happened and that the appropriate backups really exist. You're bound to do the backups and initiate the process yourself whatever channel you adopt.

APT spares backing up the old code. It also spares from having to select which parts to keep and which to update. In fact, it was so reliable that we didn't have to backup the database for minor updates.

As an administrator I actually want to do all those steps myself, it means I know what's happened and that the appropriate backups really exist. You're bound to do the backups and initiate the process yourself whatever channel you adopt. All the remainder you could, if you wanted, run as a one-line cli script. Isn't that essentially equivalent to an apt process in terms of complexity?

No... with APT, we didn't have to care about which version we were installing, it was automatic. Actually, we didn't have to worry specifically about phpBB at all... phpBB was simply upgraded together with everything else, without us having to think about it.

[celeron]

Having recently upgraded an old 3.0.14 phpBB board to 3.3.8 (and then the latest .10), I can say the steps on the website are pretty straight forward. Just make sure you have all extensions disabled and that you set the style to prosilver. In our case the prosilver style number had changed (because the DB was as old as yours or older), so I had to do some futzing around in the mysql cli to fix it. We also went from godaddy hosting to a private vps running Debian, apache to nginx, and mysql to mariaDB in the process!