Hello,
Finally took the plunge to try and get this done. I backed up our database, our backed up the file directory, I copied LocalSettings.php and our logo image -- the only really unique things we have, as we haven't modified skins such as Vector -- and untarred the file...
And now, nothing. php update.php just gives a blank response -- no countdowns, no error messages, no nothing. Trying --schema tells me that it needs a variable of some sort, even though the file says nothing about it. Right now my site -- http://awoiaf.westeros.org -- is just giving a blank, and I can't see any error messages to explain what's wrong.
Will continue digging through topics and guides to try and figure out what's going on, but if someone has some experience with problems from 1.17 -> 1.23.1, would appreciate some help.
ETA: May be worth noting that mw-config/ web update script also dies once I go through the language step. PHP version is 5.3.3.