Migrate a vBulletin 4 forum to Discourse

Community wiki Sysadmins
131

I’m only a recent discourse convert, so after a lot of trial and error I’ve combined everything above into a full command by command list (thanks @titusca and @enigmaty).

Hopefully this will help (or at least accelerate) fellow newcomers go from start to finish. Would like to incorporate this into the first post given the updates to mysql->mariadb that I think have thrown a lot of confusion into the process.

Background:

  • 1.6 million post transfer.
  • Utilized Digital Ocean Droplet (CPU Optimized 4 vCPU/8GB)

#1 - Install Digital Ocean Discourse 1-click droplet

#2 - Finish discourse install through SSH by following prompts

Open SSH console
root
(yourrootpassword)
(enter)
(yourdomain).com
(etc…)

#3 - Login to SFTP to upload database dump

sftp root@XXX.XXX.XX.XX
y
yes
(yourrootpassword)
put db.sql /var/discourse/shared/standalone/db.sql

#4 - Login to new discourse website to setup admin account

#5 - Login to SSH - begin process

ssh root@XXX.XXX.XX.XX
cd /var/discourse
./launcher start app
docker exec -it app bash
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
y

#6 - Install MariaDB (replacement for mysql)

apt-get update && apt-get install mariadb-server-10.3 libmariadbd-dev
y

#7 - Mysql Database Setup

service mysql start
mysql -u root -p
password
create database vbulletin;
exit;

#8 - Vbulletin → Mysql Database Transfer

mysql -u root -p vbulletin < /shared/db.sql
password

#9 - GEM File

echo “gem ‘mysql2’” >>Gemfile
echo “gem ‘mysql2’, require: false” >> /var/www/discourse/Gemfile
echo “gem ‘php_serialize’, require: false” >> /var/www/discourse/Gemfile
cd /var/www/discourse
su discourse -c ‘bundle install --no-deployment --without test --without development --path vendor/bundle’
(Ignore red text result)

#10 - Configure install script

vi /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb

#10.a - Make edits to text file as needed

DB_HOST ||= ENV[‘DB_HOST’] || “localhost”
DB_NAME ||= ENV[‘DB_NAME’] || “vbulletin”
DB_PW ||= ENV[‘DB_PW’] || “password”
DB_USER ||= ENV[‘DB_USER’] || “root”
TIMEZONE ||= ENV[‘TIMEZONE’] || “America/Los_Angeles”
TABLE_PREFIX ||= ENV[‘TABLE_PREFIX’] || “”
ATTACHMENT_DIR ||= ENV[‘ATTACHMENT_DIR’] || ‘/shared/attachments/’

#10.c - End edits

:wq

#11 - Bundle Config

bundle config set path ‘vendor/bundle’
bundle config set without ‘development:test’
bundle config unset deployment
su discourse -c ‘bundle install’

#12 - Mysql config (may be possible to do this with previous)

mysql --version
sudo mysql -u root -p
password
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

#13 - Install Script

su discourse -c ‘bundle exec ruby script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb’

Good luck!

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