vBulletin 4.2.5 has been released...

[Sal Collaziano]

Good morning all you sick forum freaks... I just wanted to pop in and mention that the latest version of vBulletin 4 is ready for live environments. I do believe it's technically been ready for awhile - but now it's official - and I imagine - supported... Since there was no official announcement other than in the Admin CP - I imagine it's only PHP compatibility stuff that's changed. Am I right?

 

[ozzy47]

Good morning all you sick forum freaks... I just wanted to pop in and mention that the latest version of vBulletin 4 is ready for live environments. I do believe it's technically been ready for awhile - but now it's official - and I imagine - supported... Since there was no official announcement other than in the Admin CP - I imagine it's only PHP compatibility stuff that's changed. Am I right?

Yeah that was mentioned here:

On a side note, for anyone interested, I have PHP 7.2 running on my php7 test server.

It has a number of changes that definitely upset both vB3 & vB4.
Since I wont be around to create any [official] 4.2.6 or 3.8.12, my guess is they wont ever be updated to run on PHP 7.2**

Of course, PHP 5.6, 7.0 & 7.1 are going to be around for a long time yet.


(** Actually, if you supress all PHP warnings, they probably would be ok, but thats generally not a good plan).

 

[Paul M]

Since there was no official announcement other than in the Admin CP - I imagine it's only PHP compatibility stuff that's changed. Am I right?

I did the technical work to release them this morning, and the forum annoucements this evening (UK time).

There has not been any ACP News (yet), I think you must have seen the one for 4.2.4

News and e-mail are generally done a few days after initial release.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

I did the technical work to release them this morning, and the forum annoucements this evening (UK time).

There has not been any ACP News (yet), I think you must have seen the one for 4.2.4

News and e-mail are generally done a few days after initial release.

There is a newer version of vBulletin available to download
Latest version available: 4.2.5. You are currently running vBulletin version 4.2.4.

Click here to download vBulletin 4.2.5 from the Members' Area

 

[Paul M]

Oh, right, that. I thought you meant a news item.
(You think you will only see that message if your licence is vB4, not vB5).

 

[CyberJoe]

Downloaded, now to get the guts to do the upgrade, when I did the 4.2.3 upgrade I lost all my attachments due to an error in the upgrade script.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

Downloaded, now to get the guts to do the upgrade, when I did the 4.2.3 upgrade I lost all my attachments due to an error in the upgrade script.

That happened to me with one of my forums as well...

 

[Paul M]

No you didnt, there was no error in any upgrade scripts.

 

[CyberJoe]

Would you recommend doing a demo upgrade first? It will be 4.2.3 to 4.2.5.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

No you didnt, there was no error in any upgrade scripts.

He probably meant an error DURING the upgrade...

 

[Paul M]

You should have a test site, and you should always upgrade that first.

 

[CyberJoe]

He probably meant an error DURING the upgrade...

No thinking back Paul is right, the upgrade was a success, there was a scheduled post upgrade task that caused the havoc.

Will do upgrade my dev version first, it is a good time to get my dev version more up to date with current data.

 

[Paul M]

He probably meant an error DURING the upgrade...

I dont know, but thats how misinformation and rumours start.

There is not, and never was, any error in the upgrade process at all.
In fact, a step was added to 4.2.3 (and 4.2.4) to help with the original issue.

As to the issue itself, that was down to broken database records dataing from many years ago (early vB3 at a guess).
There was actually a bug in older vB versions that meant oprhaned attachment records were not being deleted, that issue was fixed in 4.2.3.

However, the problem was that those very old attachment records were broken in such a way that they appeared to be orphans.
Therefore the fixed code [correctly] removed them. The step was added to fix those old broken records so they would not be removed.

 

[CyberJoe]

I dont know, but thats how misinformation and rumours start.

There is not, and never was, any error in the upgrade process at all.
In fact, a step was added to 4.2.3 (and 4.2.4) to help with the original issue.

As to the issue itself, that was down to broken database records dataing from many years ago (early vB3 at a guess).
There was actually a bug in older vB versions that meant oprhaned attachment records were not being deleted, that issue was fixed in 4.2.3.

However, the problem was that those very old attachment records were broken in such a way that they appeared to be orphans.
Therefore the fixed code [correctly] removed them. The step was added to fix those old broken records so they would not be removed.

That sounds about right, only I upgraded from 3.8.9 to 4.2.3, and still experienced it, but we way off topic now.

 

[mysiteguy]

Thanks Paul for the effort on this. I have a client who is looking forward to my moving them to PHP 7.x

 

[highlander29]

What's the value from upgrading from 4.2.3?

 

[BirdOPrey5]

What's the value from upgrading from 4.2.3?

VB 4.2.3 was designed to work on PHP 5.5.x, max. It happens to work OK on 5.6.x but nothing above that.

VB 4.2.5 requires a minimum PHP version of PHP 5.6.x but also works on PHP 7.0.x and 7.1.x. Since PHP 7 is a major upgrade over PHP 5 (so major they skipped 6 altogether to make the point clearer) PHP 7 support will allow VB 4.x to (hopefully) keep running several more years before hosts start upgrading beyond its maximum PHP version.

Higher PHP versions are generally faster and safer than lower versions. PHP 7 is significantly faster than PHP 5.

 

[EasyEazy]

VB 4.2.3 was designed to work on PHP 5.5.x, max. It happens to work OK on 5.6.x but nothing above that.

VB 4.2.5 requires a minimum PHP version of PHP 5.6.x but also works on PHP 7.0.x and 7.1.x. Since PHP 7 is a major upgrade over PHP 5 (so major they skipped 6 altogether to make the point clearer) PHP 7 support will allow VB 4.x to (hopefully) keep running several more years before hosts start upgrading beyond its maximum PHP version.

Higher PHP versions are generally faster and safer than lower versions. PHP 7 is significantly faster than PHP 5.

In terms of any templates bought say for 4.2.3 would there be an issue in upgrading to 4.2.5 do you think?

 

[BirdOPrey5]

They'll all be fine. No template changes I'm aware of since 4.2.3, if there are any they are super minor.

 

[Paul M]

There are at least a couple of template changes, but as BOP says, pretty minor, they will likely auto merge (assuming you had customised them at all).