installation of VM3 on 2 ERRORS Duplicate column name 'custom_desc' SQL=ALTER TA

[alibak]

upgraded to joomla 4.1.. installed vm3 over the 2.  big time error occurred ... now I have no virtuemart in components...although the tables of vm are there in phpmyadmin..

tried to do manual install, package install, individual component installl...  keep getting this error:

Duplicate column name 'custom_desc' SQL=ALTER TABLE 'xxx_virtuemart_customs` CHANGE COLUMN `custom_field_desc` `custom_desc` char(255) COMMENT

I just don't see any fix on this anywhere?   

everything else about functioning of the site is fine, and I'm able to install other componets.

What should I do please? I have a database of products in the database that now can not be retrieved!

Please let me know.

Thank you.

[Milbo]

Yeh, we have this error sometimes, the solutions is quite simple, but the question is how it happens.

VM2 had some inconsistencies in the naming of database fields. The updater renames this fields, we use this procedure for almost any update since years. The updater checks if the column is available and renames it if it is there. In your case something went wrong and both columns are there. Maybe there was an access on this column while you did the update or similar. As I said the reason for the error is unknown, because it works for many other cases just fine.

The solution is just to delete the old column custom_field_desc. BUT you should check if all values of the old custom_field_desc are copied to the new column custom_desc. As said before, something went wrong on db level and so you must expect anything. If anything is correct (very likely), then just delete the old column custom_field_desc