Upgrading Drupal
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sat, 07/26/2008 - 13:25
This video provides step-by-step instructions on upgrading Drupal core within a major release. For example, this would be helpful if you wanted to upgrade from Drupal 6.1 to 6.2.
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Please guide, how is it that from drupal 5 upgrade drupal 6?
Thanks,
Thanh Xuan,
The update from 5 to 6 works the same way. I recently updated from 5.6 to 6.8 smoothly.
Great demo of how to do this upgrade.
I was at a loss until I watched your video walkthrough. Thank you very much! Upgrade successful!
It's an easy process but it does require close attention to the steps. I've mucked it up before myself so doing the screencast actually helps me to reinforce the steps and help me do it better next time.
Hey, thanks for the great video. I was wondering what else you would need to do if you were running multiple sites from the same drupal core and with each site having it's own database. I understand how to upgrade the core files and use update.php from the main site, but do I need to run update.php from each of the sites that I have in the sites directory? Or, do I just need to do it from the main default site?
Thanks,
Spacky
I must admit that I've never dealt with a multi site install. Your best bet on assistance is probably the forums on Drupal.org.
the sites directory contains the downloaded modules? I think it should be specified that the modules directory sits outside of the sites directory, in the root of the drupal install, as is the themes directory, i think this should be all the files that need to be backed up, and maybe cron.php if you've changed it any
Am I right in saying this?
Thanks for putting this video together,
cheers,
charles
It's a Drupal best practice and highly recommended that you keep contributed modules separate from core modules. This is accomplished by placing them in the sites/all/modules folder rather then in the modules folder at the root of the site.
It's also a best practice not to edit any of the core files. So assuming that you've followed that philosophy, there is no need to backup all files as the core files from the release you are on can always be replaced with the original release that you uploaded. If you have edited core files, which I don't recommend and never do, then backup of the files that you edited would be required.
"It's a Drupal best practice and highly recommended that you keep contributed modules separate from core modules. This is accomplished by placing them in the sites/all/modules folder rather then in the modules folder at the root of the site."
This is really very important information. The question is, how to change location of added modules to have them in the directory you noticed. Otherwise, I managed to succeed the upgrade when I did not delete the modules directory and overwrote core modules. It isn't correct, but it still works.
Thanx for gr8 tutorial :)
I believe that when Drupal executes the PHP that it looks in both places for the module. So if you take contributed modules and simply move them from the core folder to the sites/all/modules folder then they should continue to function. I don't recall if I've specifically done that or not but if it doesn't work you could always copy the modules back over.
Yes, i'm certainly sure that you can move modules around.
Drupal will find them.
So in this case put them in right place, that is the "sites/all/modules" folder.
Thank you and goodbye my friend.
Thanks for the video! Question, when you remove all old files from the installation directory, doesn't that pretty much wipe away the offline message page and, therefore, people might be able to see your files or a 404 (while it's in the middle of uploading the new files)?
I can't speak to what the user will see during the file transfer, although it's possible that they may see a 404 during the switch.
I tried it with a different browser. During the upgrade, visitors got the Drupal install page. Wow, very bad! My upload took a long time, too. Isn't there a way to upload the zipped package, then unzip it on the server? What about a custom page during the upgrade process? Or a way to upload everything to a temporary directory, then run a script to delete all the old stuff (except the temporary directory), then move from the temporary directory to the correct location...? That should be faster.
The database and the folder are two different things.
If you are still uploading the database, rename the drupal folder.
That way no one can access your Drupal.
Put a temporary index.html with a message if you want.
Thank you come again.
my insecurities reared their ugly heads ... I needed this video to affirm that what I was doing was the right thing.
Thanks
Upgrading drupal is somewhat of a nervious experience especially for the novice user. This video gave me the confidence to attempt this task on my own. Good Job.
The only step that I got stuck on was #6 Remove all old files. Excatly what files were to be removed and were the files were located (everything under my Public_html folder) When I did side by side comparison of the files to be deleted with the files to be uploaded it gave me the confidence to hit the delete key. Again Thanks for the video!
I'm an e-Learning architect/producer (and a Drupal novice). I love training that references and adds value to OOTB instructions/documentation (upgrade.txt in this case). Keep the tutorials coming!
I watched, I wrote notes and I upgraded first time.
Heartfelt thanks you have done a good job.
All the best from NZ
Hey a big thank you, was as simple as pie!
:)
Hi there, will this work for 5.7 to 5.10? I did an upgrade on a test site just following the upgrade.txt and ran into problems.
I'm still on the 5.x because of the supported modules!
Your instructions were perfect for a 5.7 to 5.10 upgrade as well. That was truly painless. Thank you!
I'm glad it worked out for you. This approach should work for any upgrade from one version to another for the same top level release.
Here's a tip - before you disable all of your contrib modules prior to upgrade, first print out the module listing page, so you have a record of the modules that were actually enabled.
On some sites, not all contrib modules will have been enabled, and taking a copy in this way allows you to easily go back later when it is time to re-enable the ones that were in use...
Great tutorial btw.
Hello my dear friends,
If you are by any chance of greater destiny using Firefox, please check the addon Fireshot - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
This will increase the easiness in taking screenshots from within the browser. In fact it will be as easy as clicking a button.
And this is your lesson for today.
:-)
I've been a drupal user for years now but only very casual and never really knew how to upgrade. Also. I now know about the best practice regarding placement of downloaded themes and modules (I'd never read the sites/all/README or modules/README before!)
Thanks a million ;)
Any way someone could give some cliffs notes? My poor modem isn't up to it ..
ahh life in the bandwidth ghetto
cheers
-z
Oh sire, enchanted knight, beloved hero,
Cliff's notes in this case is literally reading the fucking manual (UPGRADE.TXT) .
Farewell.
Great video, thank you very much... I just installed Drupal a couple of weeks ago, I am new to it. I needed to upgrade to 6.5 I use a MAC and your video showed for Windows, and I am confused on one part...
1. after I downloaded Drupal 6.5 so I can upgrade where do I put it?
2. when I tried the upgrade I get this error : Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 630096 bytes) in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/drupal-6.4/includes/database.mysql-common.inc on line 41
Thanks for taking the time to make the video I really learned a lot from it.
Wikstrom
One thing I learned a long time ago was backups... I reverted to my backup and went through the steps one more time and everything worked... thanks again for the video...
I'm glad it worked out for you. It typically doesn't take too much time to back up files and the database so it's usually a good investment to do so.
Unless I missed it, you didn't show how to backup the database during your demo. The rest was very helpful, though.
I did not cover backing up the database in the video. Most people use phyMyAdmin (http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php) I believe. It's a really good tool that I recommend. If you use phpMyAdmin you can follow the instructions for WordPress at http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database and it will work just fine.
I am moved to poetry by gratitude. I will spare you though! (Drifting in the open sea, then, lo! driftwood, ah! I am saved!) This last link just did it--I had to write in.
I keep this link handy for new drupal users as many of them find it hard to upgrade.
Hi
Thanks for the great video. I followed it and everything was O.K
But i didnt understood something.
When i remove the old files and replace then with the new files after that i have to copy my backup there. How to do this. When i pasted it there again , the new files which i put before been replaced.
So how does it exactly work.
I am so confused.
And Thanks again
So green is not even on the list of colors to describe how new I am to using Drupal. I am working on moving my site over to Drupal and I am suppose to upgrade the versions but I do not know what files to remove/delete (~5:52 into the video) that you are referring to. Okay, this I realize sounds as if it is a very obvious question but I am asking it anyways. Thanks for your support! Karen
Hi Rob,
Alright, I took the plunge and just removed what files I thought might be needed (basically everything!) and uploaded the new 6.6 versions. I am back online in the (http://www.therapyintransition.org/cms_d/ to continue working on the new site before launching it in January. I will be book marking this page and referring to it often. Thanks for such a great walk through. I really appreciate your expertise.
Namaste,
Karen
I'm glad you got that worked out. In general you want to delete everything but the "sites" and "files" folders. If you have created any extra folders in the root directory then you would keep those as well. If you want to do the upgrade faster you can simply upload the new version and overwrite the old files. The "by the book" approach is to delete the files but I haven't had a problem yet when I overwrite. Good luck with your site.
What an awesome tutorial. Thanks man! All I needed to update my Drupal installation from 6.4 to 6.6.
Cheers!
another greeny from rural france thanking you both for your time and effort.
many thanks
poumaillouxistan
I'd read the UPGRADE.txt file but being the first time I've updated a site I found your video tutorial added to my confidence. Everything wen perfect.
Thanks!
I am new to Drupal and this was my first upgrade to my less than one month old testing site. I was thrilled to find your tutorial, it helped "hold my hand" so to speak, through one more step in my Drupal education:-) ~ thanks again, Jules
I'm glad I could be of assistance to yourself and the previous commenter as well. Good luck with your Drupal adventures.
thank you for this useful video!
Hey this is a great tutorial. It makes me nervous to delete all the files on my installation, so it is good to see it done in a video to reinforce that things are going the way that they are supposed to. I have on question. When uploading the "sites" directory that I saved at the beginning of the process, I am asked with quite a number of files if I want to overwrite files that were installed on the new version of drupal that has been installed. For example, the "settings.php" file was one of them. Do I want to overwrite with what was in my "sites" folder or should I be allowing the new files to stay?
You should make a copy of your sites folder and the settings.php just in case you need it. The new distribution should not overwrite your original because it should only contain a file called default.settings.php. Even still a backup is also good to have.
Likewise your contributed modules and themes (should be in sites/all/modules and sites/all/themes respectively) should not be overwritten by the new release since they will be empty on the upgrade.
I did exactly what you said in the video but im trying to find a tutorial on how to upgrade from 5 to 6. I am currently running 5 (latest version) but now upgraded to 6.8 I backed up my database in case. I moved to Garland theme. I unchecked all my modules. Uploaded 6.8 .And now I get a blank page under my update.php . What did I do wrong ? Im am going crazy please someone help me.
Ok now it is saying that it is installing , not upgrading is this right, I think all my files in my database will erase? I hope not.
Have a look at the following link for the type of tutorial you're looking for. http://drupal.org/videocasts/upgrading-to-6
Hi,
Thanks for this video. After upgrading my website I'm just wondering what software you use for making this video.
Thank you
I use Camtasia Studio by TechSmith to make all the videos.
Thank you very much.
I am running a website that host source code and is available for free for programmers. I am planning to create a video like to selected program that I have.
http://www.sourcecodester.com
Firatly I would like to thank Rob for his courtesy and kindness in contributing the videos to help those like myself who are struggling with various elements of Drupal. It is much appreciated and please let me know if there is any way I can respond. My problem however is that I did follow all the directions on the video and the text file which I copied and then uploaded 6.8 to update 6.7 with nothing apparently happening except that I have a copy of a directory named 6.8 in my Drupal directory. Probably my fault but as there was nothing to guide me as to where to upload the file I presumed it was to the home directory. Perhaps someone could give me some guidance with this aspect of the video. Thanks again in anticipation of your kind response.
Jim McCorry
It sounds to me like you need to take the contents of that 6.8 directory and copy those files to the root directory of your website. The new 6.8 files should overwrite the old 6.7 files and then run update.php.
I hope that makes sense.
Hey there,
I'm testing and learning about drupal on a test domain at the moment and was having a few problems updating drupal. This tutorial is just what I needed to give me the confidence to hit that big ole delete button! Thanks for making the video, it's definitely helped me a few times now.
Matt
your speech patterns are annoying... don't talk to me like I'm a child, and stop with all the "umm.. uhh..."
more importantly, why doesn't drupal save off your module selections and then re-enable them when the update is done? that's the most annoying step if you have alot of modules
Ummm, then don't watch the videos.
I followed the steps but think I messed something up.
It sounds like when it is put into maintenance mode users should see the "site under maintenance" page but after I deleted everything but before I uploaded and updated, it would throw an error instead of showing the "Under maintenance" page.
Is this the way it is supposed to work? Or did I do something wonky?
I think that is what you could expect if there are no files present on the domain. Once you delete the core files you want to upload the new core version files immediately to minimize the chances of that happening.
I moved to Garland theme. I unchecked all my modules. Uploaded 6.8 .And now I get a blank page under my update.php assignments. What did I do wrong ? Im am going crazy please someone help me.
Used this guide to upgrade from 6.6 to 6.9. It worked perfectly. Thanks very much, I'm new to this and this kind of guide is very helpful - onwards and upwards....
I'm glad it helped. Good luck in your continued efforts working with the Drupal platform.
Hi,
Thanks for a great effort. Thought you'd like some feedback about stuff that I had to do some extra research to understand.
1. I wasn't sure which files to delete when getting rid of the old version. Seems the answer is "everything that came with Drupal that isn't the Sites directory".
2. Had a fight with permissions of the sites/default/settings.php & default.settings.php. With my ftp prog (fireFTP) I had to add write permissions before I could copy over them, and remove those write permissions after copying.
3. I had no idea how to go about upgrading modules. In the end, I just deleted the directories from sites/all/modules and copied the new ones in. Not at all sure if this is a) right, and b) sufficient. (I notice some files in the default/files/ directory, for example.) And do you run update.php before or after enabling the modules? or doesn't it matter?
Thanks for the walk through for a painless upgrade.
Those using Cpanel don't forget to change the permission from 555 to 755 for the settings.php. Allowing write permission to change this line: $update_free_access = TRUE;
Update version is detected automatically and then change the line above to its original state: $update_free_access = FALSE;
Thanks again!
;)
After making a wordpress 'site' for a customer (just a dream how things go smooth and get installed all automatically), I had to pick up an earlier started drupal site. Oh my god! All those warnings and no 'install now' buttons? I did not really feel very upgraded :-) But thanks to your video things got very smooth as well. I'm a drupal 6.10-ner now. In only an hour. Great job! Thanx. Up to the next drupal mission!
Agreed. Not that it's a nightmare, but that the process could be made much smoother. On the other hand I also think that a completely automated processes for updating sites and modules can lull an admin into a false sense of security. Database backups, file backups, and generally cleaning house every so often is a really good thing. Especially on larger community sites.
I am getting this message in the status report, "Some modules have database schema updates to install. You should run the database update script immediately." So I click on the link to do the install and it has been hung up on the "Run updates" screen for a while now. Is this right? Thanx in adavance.
No, that shouldn't be happening. The updates should run pretty quickly. Perhaps check Drupal.org forums for similar issues.
Nice walk through thanks..
Thank you so much for making this screencast. I mucked up 6.11 somehow and it was helpful to review via this screencast. I would recommend that you put that hint about module screenshots or making a list BEFORE you uncheck them, not after. (he-he...glad I did this step or I'd be sunk) Also, you might mention somewhere that dependent contributed modules may need to be unchecked before parent modules can be unchecked. That requires saving and additional unchecking...your screencast seems to show some non-core modules as being checked...which was a little confusing (but the concise way you editing the screencast is good). I think the module dependency may have messed up my first try at 6.11. Also, its unclear to me if a step like going offline is necessary if the site isn't public yet. One other note is that some files in the sites folder may defy deletion due to permissions or being hidden and therefore its important to cover that step. Some folks may not have this issue, but using Fetch, I was unable to delete some files inside modules' folders. I had to get at them via BBEdit. Otherwise, totally great that you did this!
I used this video to upgrade from 6.11 to 6.12 and it worked great!
Thank you for taking the time to make this video. Before the upgrade I was afraid to destroy my site but it worked out great.
As far as the "module screenshots" the above user ( Keith Cross ) is correct. It should be done before not after :)
What I did was, I printed it out and after upgrading it...i reactivated it.
Thanks a lot.
Worked like a charm. Thank you.
I was wondering what else you would need to do if you were running multiple sites from the same drupal core and with each site having it's own database. I understand how to upgrade the core files and use update.php from the main site, but do I need to run update.
I'm very weak on this topic. I suggest you check over on Drupal.org starting with http://drupal.org/node/53705.
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