Upgrading from previous versions

The following pages provide an overview of upgrading Drupal core and contributed modules. This section describes the steps to take to successfully perform major and minor Drupal upgrades.

Please note that the Drupal Project has frequent updates (see The Drop is Always Moving!).

Are you in the right place? Contributed module maintainers wanting to upgrade contributed modules should see Updating Modules. Themers looking to update contributed theme should see Converting a Theme to a Later Drupal Version.

Notes

• It is best practice to back up your Drupal files and database(s) before upgrading.
• Two major versions of Drupal are supported at a time. 6.x is the current version. 5.x is the prior version and is still supported. Drupal 4.x is unsupported.
• Knowing what version to upgrade to:
  1. If upgrading from one minor release to another, such as 6.3 to 6.14, jump straight to the latest release within that major version.
  2. If upgrading from one major version to another, such as from 4.6 to 6.14, you must upgrade to the latest release within the major version (4.7), then the latest release within the next major version (5.20), etc. until you're at the latest release of the final major version
• More upgrade information is available at:
  1. The UPGRADE.txt file packaged with your Drupal files.
  2. Release announcements for the version to which you're upgrading (e.g. http://drupal.org/drupal-6.2 for Drupal 6.2). Check the release pages of earlier versions if you must upgrade to them first (e.g., upgrading from 4.6 to 6.20--see above).
  3. Other pages of this handbook section.

References

• Backup of The Database and Existing Files
• Screencast: Upgrading from Drupal 5.x to 6.x
• Screencast: Upgrading to Drupal 5
• Screencast: Drupal Upgrade Tutorial for upgrading from one version of 6.x to another

Having Problems?
For problems during your site upgrade, instead of commenting here, please read the project page and, if necessary, post an issue there:

• Drupal Core project page
• the project page of the contrib module of interest - like http://drupal.org/project/views - for the Views module for example
• or try the http://drupal.org/support page

Update problem concerning missing term_node table ids
Currently (September 13th, 2009) there exist this updating problem if you have more than 39 taxonomy defined when updating from Drupal 5.19 to Drupal 6.13. At current all defined tid above 39 in the term_node table are deleted in the update process.

Use this how to to fix it manually:
http://drupal.org/node/569534#comment-2018056

Tarball Idiosyncrasy

The tarball was created from the parent directory of the directory containing the application. Doing 'tar -xvzf drupal-6.14.tar.gz' from your DRUPAL_ROOT directory, for example, will produce a directory inside that directory called drupal-6.14.

Sure, you can do the mv thing to fix, or you can just issue the following:

Gnu Tar version 1.17+

From the parent directory of your drupal install directory:

Where: DRUPAL_ROOT is the directory name of where your drupal is installed and tarballfilename is the update you downloaded (drupal-6.14.tar.gz for example).

Gnu Tar version 1.16 and earlier

From your drupal install directory:

Where: DRUPAL_ROOT is the directory name of where your drupal is installed and tarballfilename is the update you downloaded (drupal-6.14.tar.gz for example).