500 server error when trying to import from vb 3.8

dotgarden

Member
Every time I try and import from vb 3.8 when importing forums, I get a 500 server error. when I look at the forums, they are there, but only about 1/3 of them.

Also, this particular forum has a ton of forums, threads and most importantly attachments. Often 20 or more per thread. Does it really have to MOVE all those attachments? Can't I move them manually and index them.... (they are not in the database... we have like 10 gigs of attachments!

Topics: 17,802, Posts: 34,162, Members: 652

Am I getting a time out with that 500 server error? How much ram does one need to do a big import like this?
 
A 500 internal server error is pretty generic. The server logs might contain more information about the error.

The forum module is a small one. It shouldn't take that long and I wouldn't expect a timeout from that module. Attachments are imported separately in their own module at the end of the import. Yes, attachments have to go through the importer to preserve the associations... you can't manually move the attachments.

This might or might not affect the error... but you can try changing the batch size for each module:

If it's a very large database then you might be able to improve performance by increasing the batch sizes for each import step. Edit this file:

library/XenForo/Importer/vBulletin.php

Search for 'limit' =>. You will find a limit defined for each import module.

A smaller batch size will consume fewer resources. A larger batch size can speed up the process if your server can handle it.
 
I don't know if this is related or not, but on one WordPress install I was working on, I kept getting the 500 error. My error logs didn't show anything, which was frustrating. Turns out it was a PHP error, but PHP's error reporting was turned off. I turned that on, and got all the proper error messages via PHP.

Only mentioning it since if PHP exhausts its memory, it should throw an error message. I had an import error from another forum system, which turned out to be related to the size of the batches I was feeding it--it would die during the attachments import. Once I knocked that down to a small size, everything went fine!
 
I don't know if this is related or not, but on one WordPress install I was working on, I kept getting the 500 error. My error logs didn't show anything, which was frustrating. Turns out it was a PHP error, but PHP's error reporting was turned off. I turned that on, and got all the proper error messages via PHP.
Excellent point.
 
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