Server outage due to server upgrade

[admin]

We will have an outage of 15-30 minutes in the next few days due to an upgrade that must take place.

The reason being that our operating system, CentOS7, is now unsupported. It will keep many, many providers busy changing operating system as CentOS was a free server operating system heavily promoted with hosting packages over the years.
We will be moving to AlmaLinux 8 with no loss of data or change of IP address. I have only been aware of the issue for a couple of weeks, no doubt many providers have had to have a good think as to what to replace it with.

Here is some info for those that are interested. It's all about money, money and you guessed it, money. Based on reading that, it would seem that our host, , have made the correct decision in opting for AlmaLinux over RockyLinux.



Thanks
Admin

[wotnot]

Thanks for the heads-up ... ftr, this is exactly why I dropped RHL back at release of v7.0 ..... many of us saw the money trail writing on the wall (not saying that's a bad thing, it's just that I'm not a corporation

[admin]

It's all turning in to a big nightmare. Our current forum software only supports PHP and MYSQL at what they are now. Vbulletin version 4.2.5, which we are running, is the last release of version 4.

Upgrade needs higher PHP and MYSQL. So effectively ...we would need to upgrade to Vbulletin version 5 or have an unsupported operating system. I am going to have to put it all on hold at the moment and work out a way forward.

[admin]

We are definitely going to have to go to Vbulletin 5 or 6 (I didn't even know there was a 6) or switch to something like Xenforo and it's beyond my ability. I would have had a crack years ago, but I haven't dealt with any of this stuff for years and can no longer sit in front of a computer for long periods of time.

I suppose another option could be cloud hosting with Vbulletin, which would save me a little money but most forum hosting solutions such as with Vbulletin or Xenforo don't like any third party modifications and I cant even remember half the ones on here

I have been looking at downgrading our hosting as we are not using a lot of what we pay for, but regardless we cannot do anything without an upgrade.

wotnot, what's your skill level at this sort of stuff ? I am going to have employ someone to do it, and would rather pay someone known to the site if possible.

[wotnot]

Yeah, just be through this on another forum (with SMF)...getting to latest stable was a small horrorshow according to admin there...

[wotnot]

wotnot, what's your skill level at this sort of stuff ? I am going to have employ someone to do it, and would rather pay someone known to the site if possible.

I'm pretty much out of the loop these days as well, sorry to say....I know what's involved, but it's been (decades) since I did a parallel migration (which is the safest way)

[admin]

Yep, it's one of those things that you have to do semi regularly to even remember how.
If you do know of anyone, or any regular forum member is capable, please let me know.