Migrate a phpBB3 forum to Discourse

I have no idea. I have created a migration protocol and I’m quite sure I didn’t do anything else than on all the last test runs. Let me give the settings file another check. Maybe some weird copy/paste error.

Hmm the first time when I started the importer I also got a traceback from the ruby script all I’m getting now is:

root@import-import:/var/www/discourse# import_phpbb3.sh

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)```

As far as I can see mysql is indeed not running.

I managed to restart mariaDB (for whatever reason it stopped). not this is what I’m getting.

Traceback (most recent call last):
        9: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:13:in `<main>'
        8: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:14:in `<module:ImportScripts>'
        7: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:26:in `<module:PhpBB3>'
        6: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/database/database.rb:9:in `create'
        5: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/database/database.rb:9:in `new'
        4: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/database/database.rb:15:in `initialize'
        3: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/database/database.rb:39:in `create_database_client'
        2: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/database/database.rb:39:in `new'
        1: from /var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.6.0/gems/mysql2-0.5.3/lib/mysql2/client.rb:90:in `initialize'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.6.0/gems/mysql2-0.5.3/lib/mysql2/client.rb:90:in `connect': Unknown database 'phpbb' (Mysql2::Error)

Not sure why it’s complaining about the missing DB - should it not import that dump and create that DB?

Does the DB name in the settings have to be identical to the one in the dump file?

EDIT: I did another build of the import and setup everything again and it seems to be working now. I have no clue what happened to be honest.

did you manage to solve the problem with transferring the forum?

Any chance you skip this and just get it working for phpBB 3.3? Maybe something in there will make it easier than 3.2 was?

It seems improbable that the changes that made 3.2 incompatible with the old script have been reverted in 3.3. There is a fork linked above that has support for 3.2, but figuring out how to use it is likely not obvious. It might work for 3.3, but, it might not.

Hi all, are there any updates with the 3.2 migration script?

I suppose this problem is still relevant huh? Anyone that has found a workaround or a solution to this?

Our you talking about this?

@nbianca is working on it because we are doing a migration for a customer. It’s probably going to be merged in the next couple of weeks.

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/10999

We are longing to get our forum off of phpBB, unfortunately when phpBB 3.3 came out we jumped on it in hopes of reducing spam a bit… Not only did it barely help, but it appears we’ll have to wait longer for phpBB 3.3 support is that correct?

I haven’t checked, but I assume phpBB 3.3 has mostly the same DB structure as 3.2, so adding support for 3.3 should be easy once the import script for 3.2 has been merged.

Great to hear! Thank you. I have an old 3.1 backup I’m currently using to test out discourse… Trying to get it setup right now so I get the general hang of the process. Looking forward to that 3.3 support when available!

Are there any news on the migration script? Is there a schedule for this? We can wait, but we are trying to schedule our migration, so any timeframe will help

Thanks a lot for your hard work!

We were able to find someone on Upwork to migrate ours. Wasn’t perfect, but he did a good job and we are happy to have PHPBB behind us.

Looks like they’re still working on it, which is great… Hoping maybe they get the latest version of phpBB3 supported in this push? That’s what we’re on right now… I want to get onto Discourse pretty fast here… Was hoping before the end of the year.

I’ve been using phpBB for my forum for the last 14 years. I love the software! But I think I have a new passion: Discourse.

I want to get onto Discourse as fast as possible! I hope this thread gets updated with the feature still at the begining of 2021. It would be tremendous

I’d like to thank the team for this beautifull work.

It all depends on when we get a migration to perform on phpBB 3.3. We unfortunately can’t make reliable updates to the script without a migration database to run it on.

I know there are folks in the community who would love to help with your migration and make updates to the script if time is of the essence. If you’d like to pursue this, post in marketplace – for planning purposes, migrations can cost upwards of $2000 depending on how much dev time is required.

Support for importing phpBB 3.2 has finally been merged.
It was quite a team effort to make this happen.

For those waiting on support for phpBB 3.3: There are no plans right now as we don’t have a customer requesting an import. You could give it a try by editing this line before running the import script. It might work without any other changes. Please don’t hesitate to report your results.

Firstable i want to thanks you for this tuto . I try to import our old 3.1.9 phpBB forums version to discourse but i got this error :

importing from phpBB 3.1.9

creating users
     3255 / 3255 (100.0%)  [224 items/min]  n]  
creating anonymous users
        1 / 1 (100.0%)  [0 items/min]  
creating groups
        7 / 7 (100.0%)  [2030359 items/min]  
creating user groups

creating new categories
Traceback (most recent call last):
	7: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:13:in `<main>'
	6: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:14:in `<module:ImportScripts>'
	5: from script/import_scripts/phpbb3.rb:33:in `<module:PhpBB3>'
	4: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/importer.rb:22:in `perform'
	3: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:47:in `perform'
	2: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/importer.rb:36:in `execute'
	1: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/phpbb3/importer.rb:159:in `import_new_categories'
/var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:414:in `create_categories': undefined method `count' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)

In the import file , I’m using a outside mysql database for importing and a outside postgresql database for Discourse .

Do you have any idea to solve this ?

I think that means they the query that finds categories isn’t working. You’ll look at that query and what it returns and fix it to find the data.

Thanks u for your answer , i’m trying right now another way .
In the docker file , i have modify the git branch to stable just to avoid the last update. We will see