Tasks Pro Migration Tips

I was working on a Tasks Pro migration yesterday, and I want to share some tips I learned during the install. The client was moving his Tasks Pro installation from a G4 over to a G5. Before heading over, I made a checklist of things to do:

1. Export the existing database
2. Copy the Tasks Pro files to the G5
3. Install PHP 5.0 on the G5
4. Install phpMyAdmin on the G5
5. Install MySQL on the G5
6. Import the database dump into the new database
7. Verify that all data was in order
8. Install Japanese localization file for Tasks Pro

We hit a few snags during the installation, namely:

• mysqldump and phpMyAdmin’s export produced files of different sizes
• MySQL’s default max_packet_allowed setting was very low, causing database import problems
• Corrupted PHP documents
• PHP max upload size setting was set too low, not allowing uploads larger than 2MB

I ended up using phpMyAdmin’s exported database file since they were larger than mysqldump’s, 16MB vs. 32MB. Both output formats were in ASCII, so I am unsure why there was such a big discrepancy.

The biggest problem was trying to get the database loaded up. I ran into a number of errors, most associated with MySQL’s max_packet_allowed setting. I raised to 16M in order to handle the importing of the client’s database by creating new my.cnf file (based on the my-medium.cnf sample configuration file). MySQLStartupItem launches MySQL at startup in Mac OS X, so once this configuration was loaded up, we were able to import the entire database without any problems. In order to handle the client’s large file uploads, I had to modify the php.ini file located in /usr/local/php5/lib/php.ini, boosting the upload_max_filesize to a 16M. This was for Marc Liyange’s PHP 5 distribution for Mac OS X.

Finally, I discovered that some of Tasks Pro’s PHP files were corrupted when I transferred them over from the G4 to the G5 via my iPod shuffle. The problem was solved — and we were able to open Tasks Pro — once I recopied the files over.

The overall migration took a little longer than originally planned, but now that I know what to expect, I anticipate future installations and migrations to be much faster.