upgrading drupal 4.7 to 5.2

Question

When I was upgrding my webite from drupal 4.7 to 5.2, I am facing an issue - Fatal error: Call to undefined function node_get_base() in ../question.module.

Can any one help me to solve it... Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The root of your problem is that you have some code in the file question.module calling a deprecated function (node_get_base()). Drupal 5.2 does not implement anymore that function so you get the error...

I assume that the question.module you are using is this one, which does exist for Drupal 5 series. If I am right, then I suspect you have missed to follow the upgrade instructions for updating your site which state:

5) Disable all custom and contributed modules.

[..]

11) Ensure that the versions of all custom and contributed modules match the new Drupal version to which you have updated. For a major update, such as from 5.x to 6.x, modules from previous versions will not be compatible and updated versions will be required.

12) Re-enable custom and contributed modules and re-run update.php to update custom and contributed database tables.

These instructions are in the UPGRADE.txt file in the Drupal root folder.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

When upgrading Drupal to a new release, you more or less in some respects have to build the site over again. The thing is, that because the Drupal API changes to much in the new releases, each module will need to be replaced with a new one. In most cases this is just a matter of downloading a new version of the module and running update.php.

You should, however, go through each of your modules and find out what's needed to make the upgrade. Sometimes the upgrade path can be a bit tricky and you need a few attempts to get it right without corrupting any data in the process.

Another thing is, that when upgrading, going for the drupal 5 version of the same module might not always be the best choice. Especially when talking about Drupal 5, there are a lot of more or less unmaintained modules. So the best choice might be to find a different module that can do what you want, or even fulfill more of your needs.

It's always a hard decision and your theme will also need to be upgraded to Drupal 5. In short there is a lot of work evolved when doing a major upgrade. Most of it, is making some good choices about, which modules to use and how to migrate your data.

All that aside, following the upgrade guide in UPGRADE.txt like mac suggests is a very good place to start, and doing all of this leg work, would probably have avoided all this.