Topic on Project:Support desk/Flow

Thanks again to User:Ciencia Al Poder for helping me big time.

To summarize: I probably went too fast in updating from an old wiki version, without checking prereqs and checking for errors. The solution was not too difficult, but out of my league, so I was happy to rely on the support desk.

A while ago I updated my Wiki to 1.34.1 and since I have problems.

MediaWiki	1.34.1
PHP	7.3.33 (litespeed)
MariaDB	10.3.28-MariaDB-cll-lve
ICU	63.1

Whenever I try to create a new page, or upload a new image I get the error:

"/wiki/index.php?title=Test&action=edit&redlink=1 Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError from line 1603 of /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/includes/libs/rdbms/database/Database.php: A database query error has occurred. Did you forget to run your application's database schema updater after upgrading?"

So I tried to run the updater from the browser, since I had no access to a command line. The updater gives no response at all, just a still..

So I moved the entire website to another provider, now I have command line. Today ran the updater from the command line. It runs for a short while until:

Adding log_actor field to table logging ...Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError from line 1603 of /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/includes/libs/rdbms/database/Database.php: A database query error has occurred. Did you forget to run your application's database schema updater after upgrading?

Query: ALTER TABLE `logging`

ADD COLUMN log_actor bigint unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT 0 AFTER log_user_text

Function: Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::sourceFile( /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/maintenance/archives/patch-logging-log_actor.sql )

Error: 1054 Unknown column 'log_user_text' in 'logging' (localhost)

Checked the database and yes, the log_user_text field is missing, explaining the above result.

So now I am kind of lost in how to proceed from here. I could probably alter the database manually with phpMyAdmin but I fear that it might explode in my face...

So, suggestions are appreciated! Thanks in advance.

This is a weird situation. Does the log_actor field exists in the logging table? And does it contain data (i.e., not filled with nulls or zeroes)?

Old mediawiki versions had the log_user and log_user_text, but those fields have been replaced with log_actor. MediaWiki is trying to apply this update by adding the new log_actor field relative to the old fields that are no longer used, but failing because it doesn't exist.

Thanks for responding. No it is not there. The existing columns are:

• log_action
• log_comment
• log_comment_id
• log_deleted
• log_id
• log_namespace
• log_params
• log_timestamp
• log_title
• log_type
• log_user

O and sorry for slow responding... Job takes a lot of time... :)

It looks like your wiki was migrated in one-step from a very old version that didn't had the log_user_text column, and the updater is trying to run a newer update without applying older patches first...

For example, your installation is apparently missing this patch: https://github.com/brion/MediaWiki/blob/master/maintenance/archives/patch-log_user_text.sql

After applying this patch, you need to run populateLogUsertext.php, and then try the update.php again

Thanks, I checked my logs. The upgrades from the past were:

1. mediawiki 1.16.1
2. mediawiki 1.19.4
3. mediawiki 1.28
4. mediawiki 1.34.1

I will try your suggested solutions and be back. Would you anticipate more problems in other tables?

So, I made a backup of the database and ran the suggested patch. That went well. Then I ran the populateLogUsertext.php and it said:

...log_user_text column of logging table already populated.

Now the update.php results in this error:

Table logging contains log_user field. Dropping ...Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError from line 1603 of /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/includes/libs/rdbms/database/Database.php: A database query error has occurred. Did you forget to run your application's database schema updater after upgrading?

Query: ALTER TABLE `archive`

DROP COLUMN ar_user,

DROP COLUMN ar_user_text,

ALTER COLUMN ar_actor DROP DEFAULT

Function: Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::sourceFile( /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/maintenance/archives/patch-drop-user-fields.sql )

Error: 1091 Can't DROP COLUMN `ar_user`; check that it exists (localhost)

But: The symptoms are solved. I can create new pages, and upload new images... So the only question remaining is: is everything ok now...?

I'd do similar checks:

See if the archive table has the ar_actor column populated with non-zero and non-null values. In that case, you can edit the maintenance/archives/patch-drop-user-fields.sql file manually and remove the DROP COLUMN ar_user and/or DROP COLUMN ar_user_text lines from it, and run update.php again, so it registers it as being run.

ok so the ar_actor column was there and seems to be populated with integer values. So I did the thing you suggested.

Next error is in the ipblocks table:

Query: ALTER TABLE `ipblocks`

DROP COLUMN ipb_by,

DROP COLUMN ipb_by_text,

ALTER COLUMN ipb_by_actor DROP DEFAULT

Function: Wikimedia\Rdbms\Database::sourceFile( /home/someblabla/domains/mydomain.org/public_html/wiki/maintenance/archives/patch-drop-user-fields.sql )

Error: 1091 Can't DROP COLUMN `ipb_by`; check that it exists (localhost)

I checked the structure of the table and columns ipb_by and ipb_by_text are missing...

You can manually edit the file and remove those lines:

• DROP COLUMN ipb_by,
• DROP COLUMN ipb_by_text,

and let the script continue

Well it took me a little time to figure it out by your examples, and I literally had to delete all DROP statements from the patch-drop-user-fields.sql script. Now the update.php has completed to a normal end, so I suppose that the installation is OK now.

Thanks big time for your help. I will leave this ticket open for some time in case you (or anybody for that matter) like to leave me another comment or advice..