osCommerce Migration problem

Hiya,
Totally new DH and more-or-less blind to PHP, MySQL and CMS but i'm a super quick learner...i've just made the mistake of bombarding myself with all the solutions Google presented to me at the same time and pretty much rendered the site i'm migrating from one persons account to another, useless.

So the first thing is migrating MySQL databases, is that a fairly easy thing to do?? The OLD account is a dreamhost account too but (currently) don't have access to it. In order to migrate this database over will i need access to the account?

Thereafter, will i need to have an existing database on the NEW DH account and simply import the OLD database over via phpMyAdmin?

The next thing is...i uploaded all the files via FTP to the NEW DH account successfully and it worked fine (bar the fact that the entire website was still functioning off the old DH account and URL) then - stupidly - i changed the PHP version in the control panel from 4 to 5.x and now i get:

Server Requirement Error: register_globals is disabled in your PHP configuration. This can be enabled in your php.ini configuration file or in the .htaccess file in your catalog directory.

Haven't got a scooby (clue) how to change or even where to find the php.ini file (as far as i'm aware that's on the server itself so i wouldn't have access to it anyway) and where the .htaccess file would be as there isn't a Catalog folder within the osCommerce root folder. There are loads scattered within other folders like admin and include but i don't think those would work.

This was meant to be a simple site migration...but i think i've bitten off more than i can feasibly chew at the moment :-/

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

First thing to find out is if the new account was purchased using a promotional code. If it was you're going to need to get permission from Dreamhost to rehost a domain that was hosted on another account previously. They have a rule in place against this behaviour to discourage people from dropping accounts and signing up for another term at a discounted price (damn them!).

Sorry, I know that's not the answer you wanted to hear, but that's definitely the very first thing you need to sort out before worrying about the other stuff (which should be quite easy btw!)

Interesting.
No, a promotional code wasn't used and there is already a domain that's been setup with the new account (www.bristoldrumming.com)

For the time being, i don't really need to worry about changing the DNS settings as they'll do it when they're satisfied the site is functioning properly.

In the time of the original posting and now...i managed to completely b0rk the entire website, so re-upped it again from my computer. I am, however now looking at upgrading osCommerce as it was brought to my attention that the site was made a long while ago and may need to be upgraded anyway. So i'm in two minds of setting up another folder (/OSCshop as opposed to /OSCshopdemo) and installing the upgrade and migrating stuff over....still leaves the issue of the MySQL database though.

I haven't used OC for a long while but I recall when updating a site that did implement it some years ago that there were changes to both the core and the database. I ran the database upgrade on my local computer using XAMPP Lite in case something went wrong on the shared server the site was on at the time.

If you have a gzip backup of the database perhaps XAMPP Lite might be worth installing. It's a really fast way to go about checking updates and for previewing changes before uploading or doing the same process on a live site (or indeed a site that isn't live yet).

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Yeah i was thinking of doing that...however i don't have access to the old DH account to which the database is sitting on...
Unless, it's actually within all the files i have and i'm being slow (it's quite likely...i presume that a database would be in a folder of its own somewhere different to where the site files would be located).

I've asked for access to the old DH account to get a backed up copy of the database so i can do (more or less) what you've stated...I'm just waiting.

Do a search for "SQL" on your local folder mate.

SQL backups are often saved as something.sql or something.sql.gz

Even if you don't have access to the old account, if you have access to the MySQL hostname, or *any* MySQL hostname hosted under that account, you can access the database via phpMyAdmin by just browsing to that hostname and using the DB user and DB user password for that database in the apache basic authentication dialog when it is presented.

Note that I say "any hostname", because all the hostnames in an account are, in fact, aliases for one another. There are some situations where this might not be the case if the account is very old and the databases are scattered among several actual servers, but this is rare (account must be *very* old - at least several years).

From there (or from the command line even, if the database user is authorized to access the database from your host), you can create any backup or dump that you need.

You won't be able to access any of the database contents in any folder, unless that data happened to have been dumped there by a user of that old account - the MySQL data is not in a file system you can access directly.

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

I didn't think of that

Look through your files for config.php - it'll contain all the database details, username, pass, etc.

i could kiss both of you! (but i won't as my boyfriend wouldn't approve :))

I almost gave up hope on this as i was pretty sure it's simple (enough) and was just waiting for the original web dev to give me the username and passwords...instead he sent me a zipped backup of the site...which i created myself from day one anyway!

Anywho, muchos gracias for the help...

I can assure you i'll be back in probably a day, with questions in regards to Drupal (having a 2 col theme when i need a 3 col) and e-commerce (as i have drupal 6 installed and ubercart 2 isn't out yet..!)

:D

***
Edited again....figured out the previously posted problem...had the CREATEDATABASE thingy in the .sql file. all done, i just pray this site can run on php 5 coz it's based on php4 :-/Edited by Shigster on 09/27/08 03:04 PM (server time).

Right, new problem.

I've hit a complete brick wall with this and i hope it's really simple. I've got the new osCommerce up and running on a different folder within the same domain (as instructed to do with the "upgrade") now i don't know how to get the design of the site over and have all the links working as they should...

That's probably really quite vague but i'm at a loss now and close to giving up with this :(

Depends how the site was written.

Could be as easy as editing the link(s) pointing at the old folder to point at the new one.

Alternatively you might be able to rename the old osc folder to *.old then rename new one to the old folder name and edit it's config to reflect it's new location.