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Upgrading to EE2 from 1.7 - "config file not formatted properly"

December 02, 2011 1:22pm

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  • #1 / Dec 02, 2011 1:22pm

    Trend Hunter

    81 posts

    Hey all,

    I’ve been following the upgrade 1.x to 2.x guide. I made it through the first 5 steps (moving some files around, setting permissions) and came to the “goto domain/admin.php” step and am now getting the error “Your config file does not appear to be formatted correctly.”.

    As per the instructions I moved my original config file that was within ‘system’ to ‘system/expressionengine/config’. The 1.7 system directory was renamed to “thcp” at one point, but I changed its name to “system_old” as suggested.

    Another note is that I’m doing this upgrade locally, not on our live servers. Running this on a development box to iron out any problems prior to trying it elsewhere. I’m running ubuntu, and the document root for apache is not /var/www but in /home/username/public_html/.

    Any help would be great,

    Thanks.

  • #2 / Dec 04, 2011 12:05pm

    Kevin Smith

    4784 posts

    Hi Trend Hunter,

    Sorry to see you’re running into issues with your upgrade. I also note that you posted this same question in Development and Programming, so I linked that thread back here for anyone that might find it there.

    Are you getting that error as soon as you access http://example.com/admin.php? And if so, do you still have the /system/installer/ folder still uploaded to your server? The reason I ask is because that error happens when CodeIgniter (the framework underlying EE) is able to find the config.php file itself but can’t find the $config array in your config.php file. Specifically, this is the conditional where CI is throwing the error:

    // Does the $config array exist in the file?
      if ( ! isset($config) OR ! is_array($config))
      {
       exit('Your config file does not appear to be formatted correctly.');
      }

    All that to say, none of that should be happening yet because if the /system/installer/ folder is present and you’re upgrading from EE 1.x, it will be looking for $conf items in your config.php file. It will not have even run across the line of code that I posted above.

    Can you confirm when you open your config.php file (which should be the 1.x config file now located at /system/expressionengine/config/config.php) that it contains several $conf array items and you still have the /system/installer/ folder uploaded to your server? Also confirm for me that you have all the correct permissions set and your server meets all the necessary requirements for EE 2.


    Thanks! We’ll help you get this resolved as soon as possible.

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