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August 29, 2005

Day 16: Little Known Author Displays Uncharacteristic Technical Competence

Folks, I spent the weekend upgrading my Movable Type installation to version 3.2. The upgraded version was meant to be very nice indeed, with loads of neato new features, most alluring of all being a spam filter that learns what is and what's not spam. Also: streamlined, much improved installation instructions.

So, Friday night I downloaded the files, unpacked them, and thought I'd have a go. Immediately I ran into a problem when it came to backing up my existing post database, but PJ Michaud, of my domain hosting outfit PJMCO.ca, who answers tech support queries almost instantly, explained what to do in a way that even I could take care of it.

So, files uploaded to server, it was time to run the CGI script which checks whether you've done everything right. I was nervous. Sure I'd screwed something up, something big. It couldn't possibly work first time, not something I put together.

Only, it did work. The check script revealed that all was spiffy. So, once Michelle applied the smelling salts and got me back on my chair, it was time to run the upgrade script. The idea is that once all is in place, all you have to do is log into your installation the usual way, where instead of the usual interface you find a button to press, which takes care of the entire process. I pressed the button. A message came up saying it had started--

And that's where it stayed for two days. Ah, now this was something I recognised, a screw-up. Since I paid good money for a license for this thing, so I could get tech support, I wrote to MT support, asking what was going on. They never actually got back to me.

I pored over the MT community support forums, in which it turned out loads of other users upgrading to 3.2 were facing exactly the same problem. At length, it turned out one guy had gotten some success by re-installing a certain folder full of goodies (if you're reading this because you found this page while doing a search for info on this very problem, I'm talking about the /mt-static/ folder; just replace the entire thing), including one very particular animated .gif. Believe it or not, folks, it was that single animated .gif file that was the source of the entire trouble.

So this evening I deleted the copy of /mt-static/ currently sitting on the server, and replaced it from the 3.2 files on my desktop. Then I ran the upgrade script again.

And, incredibly, against all expectation and probability, it worked.

And now, here I am telling you about it. I'm just agog. Agog, I tell you!

* * *

But wait: Author Boy also got 1600 words of actual scribble in today, as well, bringing the MS up to 22,100 words. I think it needs some work, but it doesn't need deleting.

So, a pretty good day.

Posted by adrian at August 29, 2005 08:05 PM

Comments

Posted by: river selkie at August 30, 2005 12:26 PM

Posted by: jenB at August 30, 2005 10:56 AM

Posted by: Charlie at August 30, 2005 05:12 AM

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