Thread:Project:Support desk/Upgrade never finishes

We use mediawiki as the main website for our charity. Unfortunately due to a miscommunication between our hosting company and ICT support company the PHP version was upgraded on our host causing our website to fail. I identified that it is a problem caused by the way variables are declared and the easiest way to solve it is to upgrade.

I have backed up changed name of local settings file and set config directory to be writable I have entered the web installer fine, completed the first few pages and the install has identified the existing database fine I click to upgrade the existing installation the page loads with the timer wheel but nothing else ever happens (i left it over night) I've tried restarting the installer a few times

Alas due to the PHP update simply reinstalling the backup doesn't get me any further one thought is that the session is timing out somehow given how many version we are behind the other is that I should approach this by doing a multi-step backup

any thoughts?

Current Media wiki is 1.14 Upgrading to 1.17.0 PHP 5.3.6 MySQL 5.0.92-community-log