Changing the default front page stub in Drupal 6

Question

In Drupal 6, one can go to the Site Configuration -> Site Information page, and at the bottom there is a setting titled "Default Front Page". The site URL (in text) there is unchangeable via the interface. However, we have the wrong value there.

This came about because I used the Backup/Restore module to copy a production site's data to a test server. It has to be a data problem because that is the single change that's happened. However, I'm completely at a loss how to fix it. The original site's URL is all over the database.

Simply wiping the database and reinstalling isn't an option, because we need the node, user, CCK, etc data from that production server.

There are two suggestions I've seen all over the web to fix this: change the settings.php value, and empty all Drupal's cache_* tables.

In our case, settings.php hasn't changed, and is correct. And we have both used the Admin Menu interface to empty the cache, and have manually gone in and made sure all cache tables are empty.

Answer 1

One possible solution is to simply create a dump of production MySQL. Open in UTF8 friendly text editor such s notepad++ and find and replace yourtestserverdomain.com with yourproductionserverdomain.com. Then apply this dump to the target MySQL db. Take a backup of prod first tho! And run update.php after you apply.

Answer 2

What minor version of Drupal 6 are you using?

I have been able to dump a production site, load it into LOCALHOST and not have to modify the data in-order-to get the "Default Front Page" to update to http://localhost/mylocalsite/. Clear cache, run update.php, or cron might have been the only things I had to do, if that. Moving from PROD to TEST or DEV is something I've done on more than one occasion too.

You say "settings.php hasn't changed" -- Do you mean $base_url is commented out? The only thing that has changed then is the $db_url?