Thread

Very reluctantly, I decided to try to upgrade my 2.0.2 to the latest version. Having had to basically start from scratch and redo my site because of upgrade failures literally EVERY time I have upgraded, you can understand my hesitance. Well, I was not disappointed. After getting the error mentioned in many other posts about a duplicate “can_search” category, i was able to get the installer to continue but then was left with just a bunch of blank pages. I tried restoring my site and now I get “Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists.”

I am really tired of this mess. This software needs some serious improvement if it can’t even be upgraded without crashing everything literally every time. If there is no quick fix, I will just be switching to WordPress. Thanks.

And before someone blames it on my server rather than expressionengine software, my login info is correct and dbtest file both connects and selects the database.

I know you’re very frustrated, I’m sorry you’re experiencing these issues.

There’s not a lot you’ve given to go by other than the database error and the fact that you restored your system.

The error is pretty clear, in that it is unable to connect to your database.  Are there any other symptoms you can give?

+ Are you able to browse your database (using phpMyAdmin or some other tool)? (although your script may test that there is a connection available, perhaps the database was not fully restored?)

+ is the restored database the same name as the original database? (perhaps it’s looking for a database with the old name, and the restored has a new name… again - the test connection script may mask the real problem and give you false sense of security)

+ how did you go about restoring to the previous version? (did you download and upload with FTP, or did you gzip your entire directory and restore it from the server side… or did you do something else?)

any other symptoms you have?

ehmiddlebrooks,

Very sorry to hear about your frustration with the ExpressionEngine upgrade process. Mark has asked some excellent questions that I would also like you to answer. When you restored your site did you restore the backed up database to a new database or overwrite the existing one. If you overwrote the existing (already upgraded) database there may be some artifacts that are causing trouble. Please see the docs on {retrying after a failed up grade} .

Also when you did the upgrade did you replace your index.php as per the instructions? There is also a new file introduced after 2.0.2 admin.php that you can use to access your CP.

I really do want to help you get this upgrade resolved.

Sean

I was able to resolve to database error by having my host rollback my entire site. It currently works at the 2.0.2 version. At the risk of disabling my site yet again, I suppose I will just leave this version running indefinitely having never had a successful upgrade. When upgrading from 1.x to 2.0.2, the help offered was to recreate the whole site. Every other upgrade prior to that only wasted several hours of tinkering to fix. I prefer to not have to troubleshoot for hours simply to upgrade software. Thanks for your help anyway.

Hello ehmiddlebrooks,

I am really sorry to hear about your frustrations with the update process.

If you are willing to try again, I would love to help you through the process. I am on this case now and I will follow up with you.

The document that Sean pointed you to is actually very helpful in resolving update issues. From your description, it sounds like all you were missing was to upload the backed up config file with the DB settings.

Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,