http://drupal.org/requirements needs to be updated to show new PHP memory limit requirement. See issue 197720.

On page http://drupal.org/requirements change
PHP memory of approximately 8MB for a Drupal core installation. In reality you will probably need to use a higher setting depending on your site and contributed modules you are using. A good starting point is 16-24 MB.
to
PHP memory of approximately 16MB for a Drupal v6 core installation (8MB might suffice for earlier versions). You may need to use a higher setting depending on your site and the contributed modules you are using.

In the same section of this page a new bullet is required (see this comment). After
# See the PHP manual for how to change configuration settings for other interfaces to PHP.
add
# In some shared hosting situations you may be restricted from changing these settings yourself. In this case please contact your hosting provider to make any required changes.

This is also an issue for upgrading - see 200674.

This is a bit more complicated because as far as I can see the update documentation doesn't refer to checking core requirements. IMHO this should be included in two places: update.txt - perhaps straight after the first step: backups. Include a line along the lines of:
2. Check the Drupal requirements in INSTALL.txt to ensure your set-up can run the new version of Drupal. Clearly subsequent steps will have to be renumbered. I can roll a patch for this if there is agreement on this approach.

The second place this should be done is http://drupal.org/upgrade. It appears a step of checking requirements for the new version of Drupal could come before 'preparing the site'. So perhaps a new child page under http://drupal.org/upgrade/getting-started called "check-requirements" which contains the same information as above:
Check the Drupal requirements (http://drupal.org/requirements) to ensure your set-up can run the new version of Drupal.

Lastly a question: the memory limit issues for install and upgrade are both critical and depend on suitable documentation changes. Should this documentation issue also be critical?

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#4 upgrade_requirements.txt768 byteskeith.smith

Comments

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented
Priority: Normal » Critical

I think it should be critical, yes. Note that 16MB is a recommendation, not a hard requirement since it's possible to run Drupal at lower memory limits than 16M depending on your setup and modules.

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented
Title: Drupal 6 requirements change minimum PHP Memory Limit » Document memory limit changes at drupal.org/requirements
keith.smith’s picture

keith.smith commented

INSTALL.txt already begins with this section:

REQUIREMENTS
------------

Drupal requires a web server, PHP 4 (4.3.3 or greater) or PHP 5
(http://www.php.net/) and either MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) or PostgreSQL
(http://www.postgresql.org/). The Apache web server and MySQL database are
recommended; other web server and database combinations such as IIS and
PostgreSQL have been tested to a lesser extent. When using MySQL, version 4.1
or greater is recommended to assure you can safely transfer the database.

For more detailed information about Drupal requirements, see "Requirements"
(http://drupal.org/requirements) in the Drupal Handbook.

Guidelines for setting up a server environment with a variety of operating
systems and in special cases are available in the Drupal handbook
(http://drupal.org/node/260)
keith.smith’s picture

keith.smith commented
Status: Active » Needs review
StatusFileSize
new upgrade_requirements.txt768 bytes

Attached is a patch that adds another bullet point to the beginning of UPGRADE.txt with a link to http://drupal.org/requirements.

keith.smith’s picture

keith.smith commented

I've updated the http://drupal.org/requirements page as outlined in vjordan's original comment.

gábor hojtsy’s picture

gábor hojtsy
he/him
Primary language Hungarian
Location Hungary
commented
Status: Needs review » Fixed

Thanks, committed.

vjordan’s picture

vjordan commented
Title: Document memory limit changes at drupal.org/requirements » Drupal 6 requirements change minimum PHP Memory Limit
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Fixed » Reviewed & tested by the community

Patch to UPGRADE.txt looks good.

So most of this is done. The remaining issue is whether or not drupal.org/upgrade needs to refer to checking the requirements. On reflection, it would be good to ensure there is one source of the "truth" for upgrades. It's possible other steps will be required to upgrade - we can trust these will be documented in UPGRADE.txt. So perhaps the solution here is to add a sentence after the steps 1, 2, 3 on page http://drupal.org/upgrade/tutorial-introduction
For each upgrade carefully read UPGRADE.txt and follow any directions that are given there.

In this instance, with the above patch, the directions include checking the requirements. And it means only UPGRADE.txt requires updating in future.

vjordan’s picture

vjordan commented
Priority: Normal » Critical
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

oops, cross-posted. But the last bit on the upgrade documentation on d.o remains.

keith.smith’s picture

keith.smith commented
Priority: Critical » Normal

I added another bullet point to the list at http://drupal.org/upgrade/tutorial-introduction (to appear before the instruction to run update.php) noting that the information in UPGRADE.txt should be reviewed.

vjordan’s picture

vjordan commented

Looks great. Seems this is all done. Thanks.

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.