no documented update process from phpbb2, multiboards broken

Binary package hint: phpbb3

As of karmic the phpbb2 package disappeared, so I was forced to update all boards to phpbb3.
There is no information on how to do that in the documentation and apparently essential files are missing in the package to perform the installation.

I’ll document here how it worked for me:
• Download a phpbb2 installation (including languages of installed boards) somewhere e.g. /tmp/phpbb2
• Download phpbb3 and place it temporarily in /usr/share/phpbb3/www (rename or backup the old directory)

For each board:
  disable php_value auto_prepend_file … in the apache configuration. reload apache settings
  Goto http://board/phpBB2/install/
  • Install phpbb3, be sure to use a new table_prefix (e.g. NOT phpbb_)
  • Use the backend to convert your old data:
    • old path is ../../../../tmp/phpbb2
  • /usr/share/phpbb3/www/config.php now contains the config for the new board. Place the information into your old board’s config.php file and empty the new one, before applying the same steps with the next board.

Afterwards:
  • restore the original /usr/share/phpbb3/www
  • reenable php_value auto_prepend_file in the apache configuration. reload apache settings

Also for multiboard-usage caches have to be adjusted, as they should not share the same directory (no one seems to have had a look at this as the documentation still refers to phpbb2 paths). Here is my workaround:
Make function acm in /usr/share/phpbb3/www/includes/acm/acm_file.php look like (or instead of $dbname use whatever is unique for your boards):
        function acm()
        {
                global $phpbb_root_path, $dbname;
                $this->cache_dir = $phpbb_root_path . 'cache/' . $dbname . '/';
        }

Then create /var/cache/phpbb3/cache/$dbname for each dbname and make the directory www-data writeable.

I hope the packaging can fix at least the multiboard caching issue.