Integration with vBulletin - phpBB3Auth - Migrate phpBB3 user/password to VB4

For all the phpBB3 administrators who want to migrate their phpBB3 to VB4 and hate the idea that the users have to use the "Forgotten your password?" method to logon to the new VB4 board.

The idea heavily borrowed from the ipbAuth mod created by viarun.

The solution I implemented is that I first hash the password the phpBB3 way and check the hashed password against the entry in phpbb3.users table. When the hashes are the same I use the normal VB4 method to store the password in the VB4 database.

Because I don't like to destroy the original phpBB3.users table I added an extra field "PWD_Synced" to the table and use that field to remember that a password was already synced.

We are running this mod on our brand new VB4 forum http://www.astroforum.nl and it work perfect. 330+ phpBB3 users already migrated their password to the new board.

Many thanks to viarun and malcolmx in his LDAP Auth Plugin. THANKS guys!

Installation instructions:

• Add the field "PWD_Synced" in the phpBB3 table phpbb_users. You can use the following statement.
  "ALTER TABLE `phpbb_users` ADD `PWD_Synced` BOOL NOT NULL DEFAULT '0';"
• copy phpBB3Auth directory to your vb forum installation directory
• change the path to controller.php directory in phpBB3-plugin.xml
• copy the hooks_phpBB3.xml to FORUM_ROOT/inclucdes/xml directory
• in login.php do:
  search for:
  

        if ($vbulletin->GPC['vb_login_username'] == '')
           {
            eval(standard_error(fetch_error('badlogin', $vbulletin->options['bburl'], ....
           }

  insert below:
  

        ($hook = vBulletinHook::fetch_hook('phpBB3_login_hook')) ? eval($hook) : false;

• activate plugin system (if not done already) in admincp
• in admin cp import the product file "phpBB3-plugin.xml" at "Download / Upload" Plugins
• re-check if the include for controller.php is right
• in includes/class_bootstrap.php search for:
  

  $show['nopasswordempty']

  change:

  defined('DISABLE_PASSWORD_CLEARING') ? 1 : 0;

  to:

  defined('DISABLE_PASSWORD_CLEARING') ? 0 : 1;

• test the product

Important information

In my documentation I forgot too mention that it is best to install the plug-in after you migrated the data from phpBB3 to VB4. You can leave the phpBB3 database on-line and when you go live the users start to login on VB4 and automagically the password gets migrated to VB4.

Detailed installation instructions and all files needed are in the zip file.

Have fun with it,
MoreLinux

[MoreLinux]

@VictoriaS, the directory is called phpBB3Auth and it is put into the forum root directory.

[volantis]

I cannot get this to work. When my path to controller.php is anything other than /phpBB3Auth/controller.php it tells me cannot connect to database. When i have it set to /phpBB3Auth/controller.php it doesn't seem to work, but does let you try to login and tell you the password is incorrect.

I see others had this problem and then figured it out, but didn't post the solution in this thread.

Thoughts?

[kh99]

Did you copy the phpBB3auth directory to your forum directory (the same one with forum.php)?

[volantis]

Originally Posted by kh99

Did you copy the phpBB3auth directory to your forum directory (the same one with forum.php)?

Yes, I did. I have the modified phpBB3-plugin.xml file in there as well.

My guess is something is up with the path to controller.php, but that's just a guess. Thanks for your input.

[kh99]

OK, I looked at the code a little and it looks like you need to edit the phpBB3config.inc.php file to set the database information for the db that has the old passwords (seems to be missing from the installation instructions).

I'd put the path back the way you had it when you were getting the db error - I think you had it right.

[volantis]

Originally Posted by kh99

OK, I looked at the code a little and it looks like you need to edit the phpBB3config.inc.php file to set the database information for the db that has the old passwords (seems to be missing from the installation instructions).

I'd put the path back the way you had it when you were getting the db error - I think you had it right.

That's embarrassing that I didn't even think about where the data would be coming from. I may have it connecting to the DB...I'll get some people to test it and report back here either way for future reference.

[volantis]

I'm still getting unable to connect to DB. It doesn't show any error message after the message, which seems odd.

I reset the include path to be ./phpBB3Auth/controller.php which is what came out of the box.

config file info:
$phpBB3DbHost='<localhost>';
$phpBB3DbName='<dbname>';
$phpBB3DbUser='<dbuser>';
$phpBB3DbPass='<dbpwd>';
$phpBB3DbPrefix='phpbb_';

I feel like it's really close to working....anyone have an idea?

[kh99]

I'm pretty sure you need to change all those entires like <dbname> to be an actual value, for instance <dbname> would be the user name that you use to connect to the database. If it's the same database server that you're using for vbulletin, then I guess they would be the same values that you have in your config.php.

ETA: oh, I just looked at the "out of the box" values and I see that you did change them...so where did you get those values? They look kind of strange with <> aoround them.

[volantis]

Originally Posted by kh99

I'm pretty sure you need to change all those entires like <dbname> to be an actual value, for instance <dbname> would be the user name that you use to connect to the database. If it's the same database server that you're using for vbulletin, then I guess they would be the same values that you have in your config.php.

ETA: oh, I just looked at the "out of the box" values and I see that you did change them...so where did you get those values? They look kind of strange with <> aoround them.

It was operator error typing in the db passwords. I wasn't thinking and left the <>.

So for others having problems:
- You must set the DB settings for the phpBB server in the config file
- The correct path for controller.php is likely ./phpBB3Auth/controller.php

[zag2me]

Thanks for this, saved me a lot of effort!