Update Error from 3.4.8 - Can anyone help?

[montrosefc]

I have been running a Scottish league football club website for may years at http://www.montrosefc.co.uk I upgraded the site to a Joomla site about 2 years ago and so far I haven't had any problems with it, however recently I have been having problems updating my Joomla version past version 3.4.8

When I click on the update button from within the back end, Akeeba completes a full backup as normal, however when the update begins it stops at 83% and the cursor spins for about 20 minutes before going to my hosts error screen. When I try to load the site thereafter I get a white screen with the following error message

Error displaying the error page: Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '=' SQL=SELECT id, home, template, s.params FROM #__template_styles as s LEFT JOIN #__extensions as e ON e.element=s.template AND e.type='template' AND e.client_id=s.client_id WHERE s.client_id = 0 AND e.enabled = 1: Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '=' SQL=SELECT id, home, template, s.params FROM #__template_styles as s LEFT JOIN #__extensions as e ON e.element=s.template AND e.type='template' AND e.client_id=s.client_id WHERE s.client_id = 0 AND e.enabled = 1

I've attempted to update about half a dozen times but always end up having to carry out a full site restore after the update fails which takes a very long time as my site is very large.

I've searched a few forums and tried a couple of things such as overwriting the Joomla files on my site with a clean version of 3.4.8 and I've fixed a few database errors from the sites backend but neither has made a difference. One thing I have noticed is that I am always left with one error after clicking the database 'fix' button:

"Table 'qxua4_redirect_links' does not have column 'new_url' with type 'VARCHAR(2048)'. (From file 3.5.0-2016-03-01.sql"

I've no idea as to whether this is the issue or not.

My hosts php is version 5.5, but 5.6 is also available. Should I update this?

I contemplated just leaving my site at version 3.4.8, however my site has recently been subject to regular DDoS attack and my hosts (Freeola) are suggesting that I have the latest version of Joomla to ensure there are no security vulnerabilities on the site. As I cannot update this leaves me in a catch 22 situation.

I was able to set up and subsequntly update the site but that's about as far as my knowledge goes and I sometimes find the tecnicalities of Joomla go over my head a bit.

This is becoming very stressful as I am currntly struggling to keep the site functional & updated so any suggestions from the community would be greatly appreciated.

If I need to post up any more info, just let me know what I should do.

Thanks

[sovainfo]

Search this forum for posts about failing utf8mb4 conversion. That is what you have!

[montrosefc]

OK thanks sovainfo. I'll try some of the advice from those posts and let you know how I get on.

[montrosefc]

Hi sovainfo.

I'm going to try the following as suggested in another thread;

1) removed all files from sql folder as advised
2) edited script.php and added time(0) as advised.
3) clicked back button on browser.. script started to run, then logged me out to admin login screen
4) Logged in and it started to execute an update=finalise URL
5) When it logged in, it said the Joomla was succesfully upgraded to 3.5.1
6) I went to database and Fix said it was already ok.

The only thing that I'm not sure about is where to add set_time_limit(0); in script.php. Could you advise me please?

(Sorry - I thought it would be a good idea to let you see the script.php but I'm not sure how to do this on the forum?)

[sovainfo]

Suggest 1742 just before:
// Step 1: Drop indexes later to be added again with column lengths limitations at step 2

[montrosefc]

Sorry if I'm being a bit thick here but the script.php in administrator/components/com_admin/ from the 3.4.8 stable release only has 1538 lines in it at deosn't seem to have that line in it at all?

Am I looking in the wrong place?

[sovainfo]

You need to look in J351. The one in j348 is not used!

[montrosefc]

I must say I'm finding this all a bit confusing without an idiots guide!

I seem to have managed to update the site but I'm not sure if it is fully restored?

I followed the following advice using method C at https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Upgrading_ ... 4.x_to_3.5

The site is functional and I can access the admin area which confirms version 3.5.1 however when I go to Extensions:Database it is reporting the following error.

Warning: Database is not up to date!

2 Database Problems Found.
Other Information

Database schema version (None) does not match CMS version ().
The Joomla! Core database tables have not been converted yet to UTF-8.

When I try the fix button it just times out to the hosts error page.

Is there anything else I should be doing?