TheVoidTLMB

Oh yes, I hadn’t noticed the media weren’t imported in my test run. Thanks for that, I’ll give it a go.

Qoto being stuck on 3.5 was the main reason I left. I later saw some posts about them doing some updates, but if their About page is to be believed, they’re still on 3.5.19, yeah. Hmm.

Excellent, I’ll try again when 7.8 comes out then. 🙂

Hi @obenland , thanks for your continued fixes.
I’ve made slight progress, but…

Try again to import file #1.
(First, Export backup file. Done.)

Straight to “Sorry, there has been an error.
Could not insert post into the database.”
No further posts have been imported. Well, this is frustrating, since you’ve had success with the exact same file, and I’ve had success with a different file. Okay, then let’s create a TEST subdomain…

Went to my host, created a subdomain, and immediately installed WP. The set-up installs WP Super Cache plugin. I installed Sundance theme to match my main set-up. Installed WPApps Show Post ID plugin. Installed ActivityPub, blog profile only. (Yes, there’s the Hello World post in Mastodon).

Now, in TEST subdomain, I run the importer, choose File (#1), Upload File & Import, Import.
“Imported 19 posts. All done. Have fun!”
Okay, this is great. (Those replied-to-posts are showing up embedded nicely, cool!) So the problem on my main site is definitely not a problem with the file, nor the importer.

Next step – back to my main site, and (just in case…) delete (“Bin”) the two posts that were succesfully imported from file #1. Done. While I’m at it, let’s delete the 4 posts imported from file #4 too. Done. (The two files that the import placed into the media library were not deleted. Hmmm, that’s something to consider/remember. Deleted them manually.)

Now, let’s try one more time to import file #1 on my main site….
“Sorry, there has been an error.
Could not insert post into the database.”
Again. Looking in Posts, it has not imported any posts at all. sigh

Be brave? Ok, let’s try file #2 on my TEST subdomain. This one’s quite a bit bigger so there’ll be lots of media files (mostly images) to delete after I’ve finished testing, but sure, let’s go…
A longer wait (obviously) before the Import button showed up. Click it and…
“Sorry, there has been an error.
The archive does not contain an Outbox file, please try again.
Imported 0 posts.
All done. Have fun!”
Dammit. Again, the downloaded archive was a tar.gz , which I expanded, then compressed the resulting folder (which does contain an outbox.json file) to get a zip file, and that zip is the file I tried to import. Tried deleting the zip file from my computer, and compressing the folder once, just in case, to get a new zip file. Tried the importer again in my TEST subdomain:
“Sorry, there has been an error.
The archive does not contain an Outbox file, please try again.
Imported 0 posts.
All done. Have fun!”
Well, at least that’s consistent. :-/

So there are still 2 issues I’m encountering:

• Does not contain an Outbox error
• Database error

Maybe I need to contact my host about the second one, but I’m not sure what conclusion you came to before about the first one?

Hi. I get that it’s gone into the Outbox, but when you say it “was federated”… well, it hasn’t appeared in the blog account’s posts in Mastodon (I searched on two different servers), so to me that seems like it hasn’t actually “federated”. Unless you can see the comment somewhere in the fediverse?

I just made another comment (to the main post, not a reply to the previous post), tagging you, @obenland , and that *has* federated, and correctly converted the @ name to a link in the comment.

So it seems like it must be to do with either the fact that the blog account does not have the Friends plugin installed (/isn’t following the Bridge), or with bridged Bluesky accounts generally?

Jim’s not been notified.

Cool, thanks. I’ll keep my eyes on it. 🙂

Update: I saw that 7.6.1 was out, so I updated AP, and had another go.

First attempt, using my #1 file from above (the one you have for testing, @obenland ), and after pressing “Import”, I got this error:
“Sorry, there has been an error.
Could not insert post into the database.”

Hmm, not so good. So, second attempt, using my file #4 from above, and I got
“Imported 4 posts.
All done. Have fun!”

Ah, great! But curious. So then I went to look at my list of posts (ordered by PostID), and I see the 6 most recent posts there. But wait, file #4 contains *4* posts (all successfully imported, including one image and one video). The other 2 new posts are from my file #1 – both text-only posts (inc hashtags) – so it looks like the first attempt at an import started off okay but… failed when it got to an image post, maybe? (Checking my media library, the only two new entries there are the ones from file #4)

[I then successfully edited the Categories of those 2 posts.]

So… getting there? But I don’t think I want to test with my 2 much larger archives just yet…

@obenland Update: I decided to have another try at this.
First I installed this plugin to my site:
https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/wpapps-show-post-id/ (to help me find the imported posts once they were there, and change the Category that they were filed in). No problem with that.

I have 4 different Mastodon archives:
#1 A small one from Mastodon.online (account now deleted)
#2 A larger one (71MB) from qoto.org (account redirected to… #3)
#3 One a little larger than 512MB, from moth.social (instance now closed)
#4 A very small test archive (only 4 posts) from mastodon.social

#s1&2 are .tar.gz files, not zip, so on trying #1 I got the error message ~”that’s not a zip file”. Fair enough! I uncompressed the .tar.gz, and got a folder on my hard drive with the expected contents. I then zipped this folder, so that I had a .zip file to upload to the importer. Then I ran the importer again and went through the steps of

Choose File (the .zip file of #1 I’d just made on my Mac)
Upload file & import
Assign author, tick “Download & import file attachments” > Import

And I got the error message:
“Sorry, there has been an error.
The archive does not contain an Outbox file, please try again.”

The folder does contain a file called outbox.json

I then started again, going through the whole process, this time using archive #2, and again using a zipped file of the folder extracted from the .tar.gz. Same result.

Then I tried re-zipping everything inside the folder (but not the folder itself), and using that zip. This time I got:

There has been a critical error on this website. Please check your site admin email inbox for instructions. If you continue to have problems, please try the support forums.

The email:

Hii!

WordPress has a built-in feature that detects when a plugin or theme causes a fatal error on your site, and notifies you with this automated email.

In this case, WordPress caught an error with one of your plugins, ActivityPub.

First, visit your website (https://tlmb.net/blog/) and check for any visible issues. Next, visit the page where the error was caught (https://tlmb.net/blog/blog/wp-admin/admin.php?import=mastodon&step=2) and check for any visible issues.

Please contact your host for assistance with investigating this issue further.

If your site appears broken and you can't access your dashboard normally, WordPress now has a special "recovery mode". This lets you safely login to your dashboard and investigate further.

[ link removed ]

To keep your site safe, this link will expire in 1 day. Don't worry about that, though: a new link will be emailed to you if the error occurs again after it expires.

When seeking help with this issue, you may be asked for some of the following information:
WordPress version 6.8.3
Active theme: Sundance (version 1.1.3)
Current plugin: ActivityPub (version 7.5.0)
PHP version 8.1.31

Error Details
=============
An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 553 of the file /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/functions.php. Error message: Uncaught Error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/functions.php:553
Stack trace:
#0 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/functions.php(534): Activitypub\extract_recipients_from_activity_property('bto', Array)
#1 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/functions.php(604): Activitypub\extract_recipients_from_activity(Array)
#2 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/wp-admin/import/class-mastodon.php(286): Activitypub\is_activity_public(Array)
#3 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/wp-admin/import/class-mastodon.php(246): Activitypub\WP_Admin\Import\Mastodon::import_posts()
#4 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/activitypub/includes/wp-admin/import/class-mastodon.php(81): Activitypub\WP_Admin\Import\Mastodon::import()
#5 /home/tlmb/tlmb.net/blog/wp-admin/admin.php(365): Activitypub\WP_Admin\Import\Mastodon::dispatch()
#6 {main}
 thrown

The site didn’t appear to be broken in any way, just that the import had failed. The next day (today) I tried again with archive #4 – a more recently downloaded file – in case it was something to do with a change in how Mastodon archives are formatted. I used the original downloaded .zip file, which includes the folder and contents. I got the same “There has been a critical error on this website.” error message. This time though, I did not receive an email about the error (perhaps because it was less than 24 hours since the last error?). Again, the site seems otherwise unaffected.

Archive #4 is the same one I previously successfully tested the Import with (see earlier in this thread).

Any ideas? Does this look like an AP issue, or should I contact my host?
Thanks for looking.