Solution for convert-u5data error "Error changing Directories. Exiting."

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Editor's note: Google ceased new development for the Urchin Software product line and ended purchases or upgrades on March 28th, 2012. Read more about Urchin’s retirement here. I've seen this issue come up several times lately as customers migrate their   Urchin Software from version 5 to version 6.  There is a process and set of tools provided with Urchin software to aid the migration of configuration settings and data from Urchin 5 to Urchin 6: uconf2sql and convert-u5data - both are   documented here on the   Urchin Help Wiki. However, the documentation (at the time of writing this) fails to call out a common issue that I've seen coming up for a number of Urchin users: what if you've  customized the Urchin 5 data directory? If that's your case, the running convert-u5data as normal will result in the error message " Error changing Directories. Exiting."  Terribly helpful, eh?  Right.  You can spend a lot of time following the instructions and triple-checking permissions with no success.  Enter the solution.

The Solution

If you have customized the Urchin data directory location by modifying ./Urchin5_Install_Base/etc/urchin.conf to use a different location that "./data" you will need to ensure that the location and user running convert-u5data has access to the same path as defined in urchin.conf.  For example, if you've updated urchin.conf to use "D:urchin5_data", then the system running convert-u5data will look for Urchin 5 data at "D:urchin5_data".  If this is not a valid path on the system where the command is running you will receive the error message " Error changing Directories. Exiting."  The recommended procedure in this case is to copy the Urchin 5 Data folder back into the "data" folder at the Urchin5_Install_Base" location and update urchin.conf to use "./data" for the data folder location setting. That's it!  Give it a go.  Of course, if you can't get around the issue  professional services and support are available from an Urchin Software Authorized Consultant, or simply contact the  Urchin team here at Analytics Pros.