Hello,I am upgrading an old Joomla/Kunena website and I seem to have ended up with an incomplete Kunena database migration. I would appreciate some advice before making further changes to the database.The website was originally running
Joomla 3.10 with Kunena 5.2.14. I first migrated Joomla successfully to Joomla 4 and then to
Joomla 5.4.9.I then upgraded Kunena without uninstalling it, following this sequence:
Kunena 5.2.14 → Kunena 6.4.13 → Kunena 7.0.9Both installations completed, and the Kunena version table now contains:
Code:
id version versiondate installdate build versionname sampleData state
13 5.2.14 2022-12-14 2026-10-02 5.2.14 Tharsis 0
14 6.4.13 2026-07-20 2026-10-02 6.4.13 Ravasanella 1 5.2.14
15 7.0.9 2026-09-10 2026-10-02 7.0.9 Vagliumina 1
However, after installing Kunena 7.0.9, I initially received this error:
Code:
500 - Trying to get non-existing property: profiler
With Joomla debugging enabled, the beginning of the call stack was:
Code:
JROOT/libraries/kunena/src/Config/KunenaConfig.php:351
Kunena\Forum\Libraries\Config\KunenaConfig->__get()
JROOT/administrator/components/com_kunena/api/api.php:25
I checked
Code:
#__kunena_configuration
. It contains a single
JSON field, inherited from the old installation, but there was no
property.As a temporary workaround I added
to the JSON configuration using
. This removed the 500 error and Kunena 7 now loads.The main problem is that
Kunena does not recognize the existing categories. In the Kunena administrator Categories page I see
0 categories, and the frontend consequently has no usable forum structure.However, the historical data are still present in the database.
Code:
#__kunena_categories
contains the original categories, for example:
Code:
id parent_id name
1 0 Main Forum
2 1 OpenSMOKE++ Suite
3 1 DoctorSMOKE++
10 1 laminarSMOKE++
They are published, and
,
and
Code:
#__kunena_messages_text
also contain all the historical topics and posts. Therefore, this does not appear to be a data-loss problem.As another diagnostic test, I tried to create a new category from the Kunena 7 administrator interface. This fails with:
Code:
1054 Unknown column 'parentid' in 'WHERE'
The existing
Code:
#__kunena_categories
table has a column called:
rather than
.There are also indications that some earlier Kunena database migrations were not executed. For example,
still contains old fields such as:
Code:
icq
twitter
friendfeed
while fields introduced/changed by later migrations such as:
Code:
socials
x_social
bluesky_app
are not present.
, on the other hand, still contains all the historical topics and references the existing categories through
.Joomla’s
System → Maintenance → Database page does not report any database problem related to Kunena.I have now made a
complete SQL backup of the current database and have stopped making further changes.Before proceeding, could you please advise what the correct recovery procedure is?In particular:
- Is there a supported way to make Kunena rerun the missing database migrations starting from the 5.2.14 schema?
- Should anything be changed in
to make the installer recognize that the 5.2 → 6.x migration was incomplete?
- Should I reinstall a Kunena 6.x package first and then upgrade again to Kunena 7, or should the repair be performed directly with Kunena 7.0.9 installed?
- Is
in the 6.4.13 entry significant for determining where the migration stopped?
I have deliberately
not renamed
, manually added/dropped the other database columns, deleted entries from
, or attempted to downgrade from Kunena 7 to Kunena 6, because I would prefer to let the official migration scripts repair the schema if possible.I can provide
/
output for any of the Kunena tables if useful.Thank you very much for your help.
Alberto