By naingtunwin on

Hi friends
my website is currently in drupal 6.2.
I want to upgrade to 6.3 but., what is the simple procedure to do that. I m quite new to drupal.
I need to download and install 6.3 all over again?
so, how about my old db and theme?
quite confused how to do..
thanks..

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

lameei’s picture

lameei commented

This is what I do:

  1. backup everything.
  2. copy the new release to the root of the server.
  3. extract files so the extracted files will be in a folder with the name of the new release. for example if the new release's file name is drupal63.tar.gz the extracted files will be in drupal63 folder.
  4. move the files from the drupal63 to the root folder.
  5. Finish
dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

Hello -

Here is a guide I wrote recently on upgrading Drupal:
http://drupal.org/node/280749#comment-916549

It outlines my personal method of backing up and upgrading Drupal (I use SSH for increased speed, but you can do the same procedure with just FTP if you need to, it just takes longer).
Your theme should be within the sites directory (e.g. sites/all/themes/yourtheme, or sites/default/themes/yourtheme ... etc). When upgrading you will preserve the whole sites directory, along with your themes, modules, etc. Your database will remain, and will be upgraded with the latest changes at the end of the upgrade process. Please read the above link for full details. Also don't forget to backup. Always always backup before upgrading.

Hope this helps.

-- David
absolutecross.com

mlc.njus’s picture

mlc.njus commented

David,

I have been through the documentation and your personal method and I must be slow or semi-unconcious. I installed all the new files from 6.3 with the exception of the Sites folder via ftp. I also disabled the CCK, Views, and Dynamic Menus modules, but when I run update.php, 6.3 is not presented as update choice. All I get on the select updates tab is a version tab with pulldown menus for some of the core modules defaulted to "No updates available" And I continue to get the upgrade alert notifying that there is a security issue with 6.2.

The Drupal 6.2 site is not in the root directory but installed in a subfolder. I'm a newbie, just trying to get some sense of the system and up until now all of the upgrades and modules I've installed for 6.2 have worked quite well.

Any suggestions or insights would be appreciated.

Marty

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

I don't believe that Drupal core is shown as an update when running update.php. You should just run it, then proceed to admin/reports/status to ensure the version has been updated successfully.

I'm uncertain of why your Drupal is still showing version 6.2 though. You have run update.php all the way through, even though it didn't show Drupal core, correct?

-- David
absolutecross.com

mlc.njus’s picture

mlc.njus commented

Thanks for your help. I have successfully upgraded 6.2 to 6.3, but I continue to get a register_globals "On" message in the status report. I have tried modifying the .htaccess and php.ini files based on the documentation and past comments in the forums. Drupal 6.3 is in a subdirectory. Runnng the info.php file results in the following:

http://sites.google.com/site/drupalsettings/infophp-output

Marty

vm’s picture

vm commented

can you alter any of the other settings , such as memory_limit or post_max_size uisng the methods you've used to try and change register_globals?

if you cannot, then you will have to contact your host to make the changes for you as they may not allow the default php settings to be overwritten without them doing it.

mlc.njus’s picture

mlc.njus commented

I don't know enough about PHP to test other files, but I have successfully used the .htaccess file and php.ini in the past when given explicit instructions. Blue Host allows modifications to .htaccess and php.ini, files but I think the problem is finding the correct folders and files to modify, and also the appropriate code. The directions at php.net for changing configuration settings are a bit vague and not quite explicit enough for a newbie.

My installation is in a subfolder. There are a lot of .htaccess and php.ini in different Drupal folders as well as in the /public_html file.
Is there a php file that can be inserted in the settings or the main Drupal 6.3 folder with a code snippet that can be used to change the register_globals setting? Any ideas?

Marty

vm’s picture

vm commented

seems to me you would only need php.ini put in your public root. having it in in every sub folder would mean you need toc change it in every subfolder. so that those php.ini files didn't over ride the changes you made elsewhere.

I keep 1 custom php.ini file in my public root and from there I manage the php settings.

papalion’s picture

papalion commented

the "how to update" worked very well indeed, I did mysite.com/drupalfolder/update.php and it installed/updated. oK... hmm might be some way to verify that? like a place where it records the version now? I tried examining a few file dates from a 6.3.tar etc but had no real clue... there is update.module apparently but since my install is new I doubt any modules can operate quite yet... a li'l help/point would be good.
thanks much,
PapaLion

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

You can check your currently installed version of Drupal at: admin/logs/status (Drupal 5), and at admin/reports/status (Drupal 6).

-- David
absolutecross.com

papalion’s picture

papalion commented

xlnt I now see clearly... that I'm still in 6.2. hmm wonder what that update.php fiasco I did earlier was for, sure went thru it's paces... well I just downloaded the 6.3 tar and got the files in a folder on my box... so now I will change to the default theme, backup and remove anything of mine in themes and modules, set the site in park and then via FTP I will individually replace the core files on the site?
sheesh...when the site is big, hairy, and full this could be a pilots landing checklist kinda thing:) But! the ~how to~ directs me clearly, & is still much help and the admin/status is a good feature.
enjoy,
PapaLion

papalion’s picture

papalion commented

hmmm so after a long nite crashing the site 3x, backing up as best I can on a shared server, removing and waltzing with locked/permissioned files which don't delete easily etc ad nauseum I now see that Drupal is a true Linux child, and not for the meek.
Update is a fiasco. Slowly moving files via FTP and trying to store/backup modified folders by HAND to protect them is archaic. This reminds me of Debian in '98, "your mileage may vary" was there ever anything more trite than that line... sheesh.
I am a beginner here and have no right for a voice really, but it is absurd to not write a good automatic update for this program (go see REDHAT, see a pretty good one work). U have spent years working, it is important to make the basic program secure and friendly? To Drupal credit, the user admin seems aok, Ez to modify my site, fun even, but update is a real black spot. Not flaming here and not near qualified to write it myself, appreciate that this exists at all, but auto_update would make Drupal much better.

lameei’s picture

lameei commented

Drupal really needs this auto_update. Code gurus please take this into consideration.

dnewkerk’s picture

dnewkerk commented

I thought I'd post my experience today in attempting to upgrade Joomla (I wanted to see how it compared to Drupal's upgrade process).

Here are my notes:

  • I first had to determine the exact "point" version of Joomla currently installed before upgrading (e.g could not just know that "I have Joomla 1.5.x"). You need to know the exact version, go to the download page, and choose the correct version that updates from your current version to the latest version. Drupal on the other hand is able to run its upgrade from the same package and determine on its own which version to upgrade from. In my case I was upgrading from 1.5.2 to 1.5.4.
  • Joomla did not include any instructions within its files to inform me about the upgrade process. I looked for documentation in sub-folders as well, found none, and finally resorted to looking on the Joomla website. I clicked the main Documentation link, but there was no clear indication about where to go from there. I used the search form on the side column and finally came to the upgrade information I needed with a search for "upgrade". The instructions I arrived at would "still" have been insufficient if I didn't already know what to do (e.g. a newbie might have trouble on Step 7 which says "Install the patch package"... what does that mean? Step 8 says "Make any database changes required"... am I supposed to manually adjust MySQL?). Scrolling further down, I finally found a link to better instructions that would generally guide a new user with sufficient clarity (with the exception of referring to verification with an md5 hash and not explaining what that is or how to do it). Drupal on the other hand includes an UPGRADE.txt file with clear instructions on the process, and references the Drupal.org site for additional information if desired.
  • Having completed my backup (which in a short while I was to be very grateful for), the instructions vaguely indicated that I was to upload the contents of the patch package "over" my previous copy of Joomla, so I did that (this was anything but clear though, hidden in one small sentence on the page). There was no indication in the instructions that I needed to run any files after that - the next step in the instructions is the vague "Make any other changes required". So, I visited my Joomla site - and the result was an empty white screen.
  • This may not apply to a live site on a LAMP stack, but only to my local development environment in MAMP. I looked into it and found this solution, which involves extracting the tar.gz file manually using Terminal, which did the trick. I restored my backup, placed the patch file in my Joomla root directory, and ran the commands to extract it. So again, this is unlikely to be a problem on an actual web server. It's not clear from the instructions whether it would be ok for me to delete the original Joomla files and replace them the way I would with a Drupal upgrade, but I'm sure that I cannot, since the full install file is 24MB and the patch is 11MB.
  • Joomla is now successfully (or painfully depending on how you look at it haha) upgraded to version 1.5.4.

So suffice it to say, I feel Drupal is ahead of the game here (at least when pit against its primary competitor in the open source CMS market - there may be other CMSes that get it better). Though there could be a component or admin area I don't know of yet that offers the ability, unlike Drupal I couldn't find any indication in Joomla to tell me if/when I am running an outdated version of the system (much less outdated/insecure components, which may not even be possible given the way Joomla's component/modules are distributed in contrast to Drupal's). Neither system has any kind of automatic upgrade function for core (I believe there's a contrib module to do this for 3rd party Drupal modules though). It might be nice, but not highly necessary (and a full backup is required first in any case - and on any more complex or high traffic sites, especially with various performance patches in place or files moved into core folders as is occasionally required, the feature would likely be undesirable).

Drupal is of course not an Operating System, and thus it's not really accurate to compare it with the upgrade functions in a Linux distribution, which has compiled programs and root level access, an always-known system environment, and full control over the system to ensure that it is performed correctly. Drupal runs on a wide variety of platforms and under varying conditions, subject to the various restrictions of OS, server software, database, hosting panels, file system permissions, security considerations, and much more (not to mention the "possibility" of customized core files, which you shouldn't do, but some people do)... so an automatic upgrade function would have to take a lot of variables into account. Definitely the system would need to be able to fully self-backup and restore if the process failed.

-- David
absolutecross.com