[3.3.x] Support Forum • Moving hosts and passwords not working (hashing?)

I've come across a few articles and posts here on going backwards in PHP versions will result in passwords not working in the user database; but in this case I am making a fairly large move upward in OS and PHP - I'm testing my restores before I can set a cutover date, and could use an assist pointing me in the right direction on this.

Old (Current 'Prod') server that is running my forum:

Rocky Linux 8
PHP 7.3.33
PHPBB 3.3.15

New (Where I am testing and failing to login with my user account) server that will be running my forum

Almalinux 9
PHP 8.0.30 (and then I updated to 8.3.19 with the same outcome)
PHPBB 3.3.15

I don't see anything in the apache logs or DB logs that would tell my what is wrong with the hashing between the the versions - to be honest I kind of expected that the PHP8.x versions would be backward compatible with hashing.

Anyone been down this road? I thought about upgrading my old(existing) forum to a higher version of PHP but I'm worried I'll just end up locking myself out there too and then have to do a downgrade/repair with downtime.

If you have any ideas on how to migrate to the new environment (I'd rather stay on Alma 9 vs Rocky 8; kind of the point of this migration is to uplift the overall obsolescence of this server and extend the life of the supported OS); I'd really appreciate it.

Statistics: Posted by fishpants — Fri Jun 27, 2025 3:46 am

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