Just to follow up on this.
The way we would usually solve this is by setting up a new site on new infrastructure, getting that all working (so the server etc. all works) in the new version, copy the files from the old server to the new server as well as exporting the entire database from the old to the new, and running an upgrade on the data on the new server.
In this case though you need to jump through several hoops because there's no direct path from 16.04 to 20.04, and the safest route I can find is 16.04 -> 17.10 -> 18.10 -> 20.04, which also involves changing the PHP versions along the way, which depending on how your new server is set up, may be very difficult. (16.04 requires PHP 5.x, 17.10 and 18.10 use 7.0 and 20.04 uses 7.2)
We have tools in place to help us do this on our infrastructure on AWS so that switching between branches of code is little more than changing some config and pressing buttons, but I realise that's not something we can help with unless we're hosting.
There isn't a good way to export data out of Mahara in bulk to keep all the users plus all their data - and as good as Leap2A is, exporting thousands of Leap2A portfolios and reimporting is probably more time consuming than switching the server back and forth.
I know it's something we could potentially help with, but it is also the kind of thing we deal with best when we host, because we have all the infrastructure in place to assist. That said, I'm sure if you were to reach out to my colleagues Richard or Joey, they could arrange a quote for how much it would take for us to handle this for you (or even for us to host it, and deal with the upgrade as part of the hosting migration)
Peter
