Coming soon...

[quote]t is truly a miss that the original aros-exec forums are not publicly accessible/archived.
[/quote]

I may be able to retrieve those. I inherited the old aros-exec backups and in the archive, I believe there may be content of the old xoops.

The good news is, I do have a backup/dump of the MySQL DB but the actual xoops files or images + avatars, etc.etc. I am not sure they are in there. I know I can still install xoops from the their website but I will have to see where the paths lead. More to come....

[quote]
I may be able to retrieve those. I inherited the old aros-exec backups and in the archive, I believe there may be content of the old xoops.
[/quote]

It was indeed xoops.

I do not know if it is something possible and/or worth pursuing though as I was able to scrape at least the messages as well before the forum was taken down but the original xoops website site allowed for invalid HTML (at least my data shows data not 100% conforming to standards) which makes it pretty difficult (at least for me) to convert those messages to something manageable.

No idea if setting up a xoops instance inside a vm would make it possible to (properly) export the contents for you though. I am not that familiar with xoops. If you managed to obtain a copy then I would assume that it would be possible and that the backup contain some actual contents.

These kind of things always boils down to time, effort and enthusiasm

Speaking of which, I do hope 4play is still alive and doing well.

4play, I hope you're doing well. On June 7, you posted in a discussion on EAB.

[quote name=amigamia post=8636]@amigamia - [quote]t is truly a miss that the original aros-exec forums are not publicly accessible/archived.
[/quote]

I may be able to retrieve those. I inherited the old aros-exec backups and in the archive, I believe there may be content of the old xoops.[/quote]
It would be great: it was/is an invaluable knowledge base, which has no equals.

Trying to find which version of xoops was used but I can't find most of the original files. Looking at the MySQL dump and time stamps, I think the switch from the old xoops to SMF was done sometime between 2009 and 2010. Does anyone recall that time frame?

Did some investigation in order to verify my botched memory :-)

The "switch" as the wayback machine reports is that on sep 22nd 2018 the site at aros-exec.org was (still) xoops.

On oct 20th of 2018 the url was reported to have been moved to ae.amigalife and with the site also moved from xoops to smf.

Alas, I was unable to locate a xoop version number in the source-code of the main HTML (perhaps one of the js scripts does contain one though but I have not found it yet)

In case this does not work out then the other route would be, and that is in case it is possible, to access the SQL DB in case you happen to have the (admin) access to that. It should be possible to recall how xoops stored things in there though with plugins/customizations it could become a bit messy (but I honestly do not know for sure because I now almost next to nothing about xoops).

If it helps, this web page posted by archive.ph dates back 7 years!

https://archive.ph/eDAHk

[quote name=AMIGASYSTEM post=8692]@AMIGASYSTEM - If it helps, this web page posted by archive.ph dates back 7 years!
[/quote]

It helps somewhat, thx.

From that page I was able to reach another page: https://archive.ph/UoM8L which lists XOOPS powered by CBB v308 (even though the main page indicates to be using newbb).

CBB v308 does (did) indeed exists. But atm unable to link to a php/xoops core version yet.


@admin: perhaps an idea (request) to split up this topic in order to not hog in the topic of the original poster ? They aren't exactly the same topics

[quote name=magorium post=8693]@magorium - [quote name=AMIGASYSTEM post=8692]@AMIGASYSTEM - If it helps, this web page posted by archive.ph dates back 7 years!
[/quote]

It helps somewhat, thx.

From that page I was able to reach another page: https://archive.ph/UoM8L which lists XOOPS powered by CBB v308 (even though the main page indicates to be using newbb).

CBB v308 does (did) indeed exists. But atm unable to link to a php/xoops core version yet.


@admin: perhaps an idea (request) to split up this topic in order to not hog in the topic of the original poster ? They aren't exactly the same topics [/quote]

Great idea. I'll create a new thread and move these last posts over.

[quote name=magorium post=8691]@magorium - Did some investigation in order to verify my botched memory :-)

The "switch" as the wayback machine reports is that on sep 22nd 2018 the site at aros-exec.org was (still) xoops.

On oct 20th of 2018 the url was reported to have been moved to ae.amigalife and with the site also moved from xoops to smf.

Alas, I was unable to locate a xoop version number in the source-code of the main HTML (perhaps one of the js scripts does contain one though but I have not found it yet)

In case this does not work out then the other route would be, and that is in case it is possible, to access the SQL DB in case you happen to have the (admin) access to that. It should be possible to recall how xoops stored things in there though with plugins/customizations it could become a bit messy (but I honestly do not know for sure because I now almost next to nothing about xoops).[/quote]

Hi magorium,

Thank you for helping out. All that you mentioned is exactly what I am trying to do. So far, I restored the database from backup and sifting through the tables to understand what is needed for files.

I also have xoops files setup but I am having trouble with the modules. For example, I was able to find newbb (Forum) version 3.08 but it just refuses to install. I did manage to install version 5 (Final) of newbb. I'll post some screenshots when I am home to show you the errors I get on 3.08.

As for xoops I have tried 2.5.8 (First one that does not give me problems), 2.5.9 and now I am going to 2.5.10. I am matching the built-in modules (i.e. System) version between the aros-exec modules tables (the modules version is in there) and the new database.

So far no much of a success but I am getting closer. You can browse to [url]https://aros-exec.arosworld.org[/url]

I am trying to import the user table in and then I'll try the forum post.

I was able to import the users table (1486 users). I guess 4pLaY never cleaned up spammers and bot accounts.

Thank you for having split off this topic @amigamia.

Yeah, there was a reason that 4play wanted out. It was no fun to maintain anymore. Note that he did remove spam accounts by the dozens but at a certain point it was nearly impossible to fight against it anymore.

Ofc, I do not have to tell ya but but the main factor is being able to match posts to threads and users to posts. The other interesting part might perhaps be the news-items.

I was unable to find many references to older versions of xoops (other than the dead horse argument to update your stuff in case of issues). But what was at least clear is that the version of xoops used seems to heavily depend on the version of php.

I can only imagine that becoming more complicated when plugins and other dependencies come into play.

As a note of warning: Be very careful with what you expose to the internets @amigamia because older versions of xoops are not very safe (in fact, easy hackable).

[quote name=amigamia post=8695]@amigamia - [quote name=magorium post=8691]@magorium - Did some investigation in order to verify my botched memory :-)

The "switch" as the wayback machine reports is that on sep 22nd 2018 the site at aros-exec.org was (still) xoops.

On oct 20th of 2018 the url was reported to have been moved to ae.amigalife and with the site also moved from xoops to smf.

Alas, I was unable to locate a xoop version number in the source-code of the main HTML (perhaps one of the js scripts does contain one though but I have not found it yet)

In case this does not work out then the other route would be, and that is in case it is possible, to access the SQL DB in case you happen to have the (admin) access to that. It should be possible to recall how xoops stored things in there though with plugins/customizations it could become a bit messy (but I honestly do not know for sure because I now almost next to nothing about xoops).[/quote]

Hi magorium,

Thank you for helping out. All that you mentioned is exactly what I am trying to do. So far, I restored the database from backup and sifting through the tables to understand what is needed for files.

I also have xoops files setup but I am having trouble with the modules. For example, I was able to find newbb (Forum) version 3.08 but it just refuses to install. I did manage to install version 5 (Final) of newbb. I'll post some screenshots when I am home to show you the errors I get on 3.08.

As for xoops I have tried 2.5.8 (First one that does not give me problems), 2.5.9 and now I am going to 2.5.10. I am matching the built-in modules (i.e. System) version between the aros-exec modules tables (the modules version is in there) and the new database.

So far no much of a success but I am getting closer. You can browse to [url]https://aros-exec.arosworld.org[/url]

I am trying to import the user table in and then I'll try the forum post.[/quote]
I'm not a sysadmin, so just an idea: can you try docker to create a container with the specific versions of the softwares which worked on the old AROS-Exec forum?

That's an idea but I am not an expert on docker. The problem is in trying to find all the correct components that were used on the original aros-exec. I only had the mysql dump of the database and some basic config files and that's it.

It's a work in progress. You can see from the screenshot some WIP. I have restored all the user accounts but no one login and reset as I have that part disabled. I am now attempting to merge the forum tables. Just takes time and many trial and errors but it's starting to shape up.

Sorry mate but I am currently not in a position to dive deep(er) into this topic (perhaps next week). In that regards the/my timing is a bit unfortunate.

No worries! I am not in a rush and I don't have a deadline.

I do appreciate any help in genereal.

Well, the forums are up!! [url]https://aros-exec.arosworld.org[/url].

As anonymous you can read and browse but cannot post. So much still needs to be done and fixed. Users are loaded but I turned off any registration and pass resets for now until I get a better handling of the forum, news, and other parts. It was a lot of work with MySQL table imports, tweaks, and other custom work but I think I got all of them loaded.

All of the avatars, images, and attachments were not available on the archive I received form 4pLaY. So, if you see posts with a broken attachment, those are gone. Nothing I can do about that.

As I mentioned, things are still wacky with dates, times, etc. It is by a long stretch not complete. Just be mindful when you ask for anything to be fixed, that's all.

I can't yet login, but I can read again the forum posts (A LOT of interesting discussions). :-D

Great work!