By Shadowpdx99 on

Hi Everyone.  I need some advice  I need to restore a DRUPAL  Version 6.x site with the hopes of then upgrading it to Version 8.X. The original site was lost when the hosting provider went SUDDENLY without warning Out of Business, which happen at a real bad time.  If at all possible, I must restore this site or all the content would be lost, which would impact other projects  I have a local copy of the site that I think is pretty current (for the version) and I have a disk image from the original server of the website root, so I can get the uploaded files.  I also have backup database .SQL files.

I tried loading the files locally which didn't work because I am using PHP 7 which won't work with DRUPAL 6.x.  So I uploaded the public_html directory to the new hosting provider and tried to restore the databases and it didn't work. So now my thinking is to upload the core DRUPAL files with a blank database with the same name as the old site and then execute install.php.  If the install is successful, I would then load the backup .SQL files and hopefully that will recover the data.   Is my thinking wrong or should I be doing something else?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

VM’s picture

VM commented

https://www.drupal.org/forum/support/upgrading-drupal/2018-05-03/trying-...

It won't matter how you upload a Drupal 6 site, it will not run on PHP7. you need a development environment on your local machine and the version of PHP needed to run D6.

Shadowpdx99’s picture

Shadowpdx99 commented

The server that I loaded the website to has allows for downgrading PHP 7 to PHP 5.6.  I did that step so the DRUPAL files are running under PHP 5.6

VM’s picture

VM commented

starting from a new installation won't provide much aid. Drupal is database driven and the moment you import the backed up database you are right back where you are at. That said, you need to determine what is wrong with the database backup. Are you getting any errors? If none, what is occurring? 'it didn't work' isn't an actionable statement.

John_B’s picture

John_B commented

The question is unclear. It states

So I uploaded the public_html directory to the new hosting provider and tried to restore the databases and it didn't work.

Does that mean the database import didn't work? Or that the database import worked but the site did not?

FWIW I recently tried to fire up a D6 site on a $20 per month cPanel shared hosting provider, and even with the php version set to 5.3 for the entire hosting account the site would not work. I still do not know why. I moved the site to another cheaper cPanel hosting provider which I usually use for WordPress and the site does work. In short, if it is the site rather than the db import which does not work, it may be worth trying to run it elsewhere.

Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors