How to upgrade Drupal?

Posted by hujia on October 13, 2008 at 12:39am

I need to upgrade my drupal from 6.4 to 6.5 due to the alert for security reason etc.
Question: how to upgrade the site? Do i have to replace the whole site with the full version of the site, or there is a upgrade script that I can run to achieve that (like patch), or I only need a small patchy surgery: replace certain portion of the files/folders, like certain core modules? thanks! Hujia

Comments

You need to - set your site

Posted by cog.rusty on October 13, 2008 at 1:16am

You need to
- set your site to "offline" in /admin/settings/site-maintenance
- replace all drupal files with the files of the new release
- run update.php to update your database as well
- set the site back online.

You can keep the additional modules and themes which you may have installed in /sites/all/modules and sites/all/themes.

Also be careful to keep safe your uploaded files and images directories, the sites/default/settings.php file with your settings, and any other customizations you have made to files (e.g. in your theme).

It is a minor version update, so it is not hard.

Is it also necessary to

Posted by izmeez on October 13, 2008 at 1:17am

Is it also necessary to disable all the modules and then re-enable them all again as it says in the upgrade.txt file or is that just for those upgrading from Drupal 5.x ?

Thanks,

Izzy

No, no need to disable

Posted by cog.rusty on October 13, 2008 at 1:46am

No, no need to disable anything in a minor core update. Just set the site to off-line first.

Disabling modules is only needed in major updates (such as Drupal 5 to Drupal 6), where you need to replace the modules with new versions as well.

Thank you. For newbies like

Posted by izmeez on October 13, 2008 at 3:34am

Thank you. For newbies like me it is helpful to know this and it may be helpful to include this in the documentation. Thanks,

Izzy

Thanks - your reply also

Posted by hujia on October 13, 2008 at 1:19am

Thanks - your reply also underscores the vital importance to keep all new modules, either self created or distributed ones from download to be NOT in /modules, BUT in /sites/all/modules and sites/all/themes, if not solely but primarily because the need to use the total file substitution for version upgrades.
(i put the new modules together with the /modules/ which appears to be a blunder. but thanks again.

If you move those modules

Posted by cog.rusty on October 13, 2008 at 1:49am

If you move those modules and themes out to /sites/all, and Drupal seems to lose the theme or something, then just visit the /admin/build/modules and /admin/build/themes pages in Drupal and it will automatically find the new locations of the modules and themes.

Necessity of taking site offline

Posted by daneyuleb on December 15, 2008 at 10:30pm

If it's just a test site, is it necessary to take it offline before updating for a minor Drupal update?
In other words, does taking it offline do other things beside making sure no active users are accessing files?

There have been cases with

Posted by cog.rusty on December 15, 2008 at 10:40pm

There have been cases with some modules that a minor update while users were accessing the site caused damage to data. It is practically difficult to know whether it matters for some modules, so it is a good idea to always take the site off-line.

If it is a test site and nobody accesses it, you don't need to take it off-line.