It doens't "ROUTINELY crash the database". Well it does seem that way for you, but you don't ever seem to follow the directions.
I have upgraded more forums than I can count, including one with over a half million posts.... and I haven't had any trouble with the current altertable. I did with the early beta of it (when 6.2 first came out). I can routinely upgrade forums in 2-3 hours depending on their size... using all sorts of different servers, hosts and platforms.
The big step in the 6.2 altertable is the private messages. Not the posts.
From Upgrading.html
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Before upgrading you may want to purge very old private messages via the admin section. This upgrade makes some major changes to the database structure and the step to process private messages can take the longest.
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It warns that large numbers of PMs could take a while and might time out. That's because it has to convert every one of them from user name to user number... and match them all up. It can't be done with a series of queries... it's a series of loops and joins etc...
When that process gets run twice it sets the User Id on the PM to 0 - check the table - all the PMs are there - you just ended up running it through that process twice. And unfortunately once they are all assigned to user "0", there's not really an easy way to reassign them..without going back to a backup of that table. I'd restore the database to second database - run the altertable on that - the extract the Messages table to the live database. Then you don't need to step backwards with posts etc.... and can just deal with what's most likely broken.
I'm thinking your *real* trouble came when you ran two altertables simultaniously because you were impatient.
So in that case - you are correct. Infopop does not warn you that running 2 altertables at the same time can mung up your database.
But they do say to run them in order.
I understand you expected a warning - but in all the altertables that there have been, I think only 2 of them were broken into steps - and even those do the first step the minute you start it. The rest just go right through it.
From the upgrading.html file... at the very top:
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Upgrade instructions are listed in reverse order. So if you keep up with each upgrade, your upgrade instructions will be right at the top. (NOTE: If you have to run an altertable, make sure you only click on it one time and do not hit the stop button during this time. Some altertables will take awhile to finish.
If you can it is always a good idea to back up your SQL database. You can use something like phpMyAdmin for this or from a telnet prompt... blah blah blah
WARNING: When running some of the altertable scripts your browser may end up timing out.
Do not reload/refresh the page. Mysql will still be working and it will continue as normal when it's done.
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But in your first post above you said:
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So I tried a logical thing: hit the reload button.[/]
For the vast majority of folks - when the directions say "do not" then it's really not the "logical thing".
For your next upgrade, I'd backup the database - read the directions. If you are among the first to upgrade, I'd even head on over to infopop.com and see if anyone's having any issues or troubles. That'll give you a heads up if there's anything you need to be aware of. Then take your time and do the steps in order. It shouldn't take you that much time and should be relatively painless.
