Upgrade left red "check version" files

[ohmster]

Jon, thanks for the wiki links and for showing me where the docs are. I really could not find them, was not lazy, just did not know where to look. I am also not a php coder so I really do not understand a lot of this stuff, although I can hold my own in html. Thank you for your help and your ever straining patience with me Mr. Daley.

I updated from 1.2.8 to 1.2.9 to 1.2.10 as per jondaley by using the zip files only. I think this version is a LOT nicer and I might even get a plugin to work, especially anti-spam. The hidden input looks good but I cannot get it to work. I guess I just do not understand "How" it is supposed to work. I see no additional fields to fill out on the comment form, yet am always rejected. We will get to that.

The blog is here for anyone that wants to see it. It is a private blog, does not accept new members to start their own blogs, but user comments are encouraged and I would love if some of you would test leaving a comment and seeing if it works for you or not. I am trying to rid the comments of spam and this is more challenging than I thought.
http://www.jeanclaudearts.com/blog.html

What concerns me is the version check on all files. Jon says that there should be NO red files after a file version check, even when updating via the small version zip files. First 8 to 9, then 9 to 10. I did this and it seems to have worked, But in the admin panel there is a misc section where you can check versions and this is what I end up with. How do I fix this?



Is this a big problem and what can I do about it? If I unzip lifetype-1.2.10.zip into LifeType and allow overwrite, will I lose the entire blog? I know the information is stored in a database but how will the new files be able to access that database if they are all replaced with the new version files?

I don't care so much about settings and styles, that stuff I can put back in the Admin panel, but I do care about resources, links, pictures, and all of the posted blogs "going away". An somebody help me please?

Thank you,
Paul

[jondaley]

I mostly answered this on one of your other forum posts, but you asked a bit more here.

You could use the full-version files, and then simply not overwrite your gallery and config/config.properties.php. If you have made modifications to the template directory, you would need to be more careful there - the admin template has had significant revision in the 1.2.8,1.2.9 and 1.2.10 revisions. I think some changes were made in the rss templates too.

I assume you haven't made any changes to the /class directory - that isn't usually needed.

[ohmster]

I mostly answered this on one of your other forum posts, but you asked a bit more here.

You could use the full-version files, and then simply not overwrite your gallery and config/config.properties.php. If you have made modifications to the template directory, you would need to be more careful there - the admin template has had significant revision in the 1.2.8,1.2.9 and 1.2.10 revisions. I think some changes were made in the rss templates too.

I assume you haven't made any changes to the /class directory - that isn't usually needed.

Jon,

I am too scared to overwrite anything you have not told me is okay to overwrite. I did find the backup on my Linux server and examined version.php in vim.
<?php
$version = "lifetype-1.2.8_r6440";
?>
Then I uploaded all the files from lifetype-1.2.8-upgrade-lifetype-1.2.9.zip and then uploaded the entire contents of lifetype-1.2-9-upgrade-lifetype-1.2.10 and allowed overwrite of all files. Other than that, I have uploaded or changed nothing but for some plugins that I unzipped into the plugin directory and I did mess with the default commentform.template trying to get the plugins to work. So I will read the red list, take the first two files, upload them from lifetype-1.2.10.zip, check the file versions again, and if those two files dropped off the list, continute this approach until finished. I will keep you updated. Thank you for your help. I will need more of your help when I have another go at the hidden input plugin, that one drives me bats as no extra field boxes are drawn or labeled in the comment page and comments are always blocked because of it. <shrug>

Thanks,
Paul

[jondaley]

Have you gotten the 1.2.10 version of the commentform file? If you haven't, there is a bit to add to make hiddeninput work - that plugin didn't used to be installed by default - I don't remember when it was added.

And yes, your approach sounds good.

[ohmster]

Have you gotten the 1.2.10 version of the commentform file? If you haven't, there is a bit to add to make hiddeninput work - that plugin didn't used to be installed by default - I don't remember when it was added.

And yes, your approach sounds good.

Yes, last night I put the comment and admin templates that were in red on the server. Those were the only two red files besides all of the others that were in the class directory. So I uploaded the entire 2.1.10 class folder and overwrote all (I still have a working backup of the 1.2.8 blog.) and I STILL had tons of red files in the class directory. WTF?!! I got two of them lined up in my FTP program, local v.s. remote, side by side, for comparison, and sure enough, they were different files with the same name. The sizes and dates were different! It got late so I deleted the entire class directory and all of it's subs, then uploaded my 1.2.10 class directory with subs, and I forgot to refresh the view before the upload. Yep, you guessed it, still I have tons of mismatch files in red. The blog works and all but why the files are not the same is starting to irritate me. I might just download the lifetype 1.2.10 tarball, extract it in Linux, and FTP it up to the server, all in Linux, and see what happens that way. I would probably do it now but it is a little late and I am tired and don't want to do this if I am not totally up for doing it. I would rather wait for when I have time to see exactly what is going on here.

If you don't mind my asking Jon, what exactly is supposed to happen with hidden input? Will there be any new fields in the comment form page for the visitor to see? If so, I sure do not see any. I just tried it and capped it with 5 images. The comment seemed to "just work" although I saw no evidence of the plugin working. Am I doing this right? How would this stop a spammer? Would you mind looking at my screencaps to see if I am doing this right please?

Thank you Jon.

[jondaley]

Yes, you have it setup correctly, though you should probably customize it - I think you are using the defaults right now?

If you look in the HTML source, you will see that it is working.

And that is the great thing about hiddeninput - the user doesn't see anything, and can't possibly fail it, and lots of spammers do fail it.

[jondaley]

It sounds like your FTP client is modifying the files as it uploads them - perhaps it is changing the line endings from windows to linux or something? If you transfer the files as binary, it will probably leave them alone.

[ohmster]

It sounds like your FTP client is modifying the files as it uploads them - perhaps it is changing the line endings from windows to linux or something? If you transfer the files as binary, it will probably leave them alone.

I agree. I went so far as to completely delete the class directory and all of it's subs, then uploaded my 1.2.10 files, and when I do a version check, I get tons of errors. Then when I FTP in and compare local to remote, they are NOT the same! I gotta show you a picture of this because it is so unbelievable and CuteFTP Pro is Great software! But it is not configured the way I want, I can tell as it goes in and out of PASV mode, and I do not want for it to do that in the middle of such a transaction such as mirroring directories and sites. As a matter of fact, this is so amazing that I have to show it to you. I will give you a side by side picture of one of the class files that do not match, yet they came from the same source! The only think I can think of is that perhaps since the blog is still online and live, some files could not be overwritten or deleted because they were in use. That might explain it. Anyway, here is a perfect example of what happened after I deleted the entire class directory and then uploaded it again.



The files do not match! WTF??!! Maybe if I change the name of the LifeType root folder temporarily that will stop anyone from using it while file transfer is in progress and I can try again. I can also reconfigure my FTP program to be a bit more strict and it does have a "check and compare files after transfer" feature that I do not enable by default because it takes too long. I don't want to mess with this all night tonight, I have surgery scheduled for Friday super early in the morning and need my rest but I can do this and see what happens. Okay lifetype directory now renamed to lifetype_bak. The blog is officially offline. Try transfer again.

Okay, I am doing this again, with CuteFTP Pro 8, this time I configured it a bit more tightly. We will use PORT connection only, no PASV, we will mirror remote drive to match local class drive and all of it's subs. We will use CRC check to make sure all files really do match, we will do a complete mirror, even to the extent of deleting files that do not exist in the local folder. We have renamed the lifetype folder to make the blog inaccessible to the world while we work on it. What I am using for a local LifeType folder set is the unzipped contents of lifetype-1.2.10.zip. This may take a while, it usually does because the class directory and all subs is pretty large and contains LOTS of files, but that is where the version differences show up. I really do not want to see any red files in the version check page anymore. The two template files, the commentform and admin header template I have already replaced with originals so this final class directory mirror should do the trick and I will be amazed if it fails this time.

Wow, we are done. Okay, here goes the acid test. Restore the lifetype directory name and do a version check on all files.

Heh heh, now THIS is worth a look!



Thanks for your help Jon. One day I hope to understand exactly what the f*ck that hidden input does, how it should look, and if it is working or not. I would also really like to know what a "Trackback" is. Goodnight for now, time to get some rest.

Sincerely,
Paul Baio
http://www.paulspcworks.com/

(The above URL is what my Linux server is for, or at least one of the things I use it for. PPW is hosted on my local machine with a very broadband comcast connection.)

[jondaley]

Yup, I've seen FTP clients not copy files correctly, and not report any errors at all.
The safest way to do it is if you have an HTML control panel type thing that allows you to upload a tar/zip file and then untar/unzip it on the server. I've never seen that method fail.

One way to make FTP clients happier is to only allow them to copy one file at a time, I've seen that break file uploading, and that was in the case of I had full control of the client and server, so I knew it was on the client side. (I've seen servers do weird things too, like auto-logout stuff, and clients don't retry properly).

If your account supports it, I think scp (copy over ssh) works well too - there is a windows winscp client that some of my customers use, so they don't even know they aren't using FTP. And it has the side-benefit of being secure, so your password isn't broadcast over the internet.

Glad to hear you finally got it working.