Safe Upgrading
You should really aim to upgrade your EPrints repository about once a year to keep on top of the new developments. Upgrading your EPrints repository can be a very daunting task. The aim of this page is to get people who are not confident about undertaking it into a position where it is safe to do so. Note upgrading is different to migrating (although some of the procedures maybe the same).
Contents
Am I Upgrading?
Upgrading is when you intend to update eprints code base on a server to a later version. Upgrading covers moves from EPrints 3.x.y to 3.a.b if you want to move from EPrints 2.x.y to 3.a.b then you are undertaking a migration. Also if you are moving your EPrints repository from one server to another you are migrating. Upgrading is just a different sub-version (but same main version) of EPrints on the same server.
Preparation
If you are upgrading then there are a number of precautions you can take to ensure the process runs as smoothly as possible. It is impossible to give 100% cast iron guarantee an upgrade will succeed particularly if you have a heavily customised repository so you must make sure that you are in position to roll back in the unlikely event that the upgrade does not go to plan.
It is worth saying at this point that if possible you can ease your fears by performing this task on a development server as a practice run. This technique if available to you is strongly advised.
To prepare you should:
Tell an adult
Talk to your system administrator about getting a full system backup made. It is advisable to do this fairly regularly anyway in case of hardware failure or fire (see backing up).
You should also speak to who ever you need to get permission from to cause server down time. This is not always required as many upgrades can be done with very little down time but it is best to ask for permission and not use it than find you have to apologize for an unexpected service outage.
Create a backups directory
mkdir <eprints_root>/backups
To create a directory to put backups into.
Check you have enough disk space
df -h
Will give you a table:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 32G 1.4G 31G 5% / /dev/sda7 32G 22G 11G 67% /opt /dev/sda8 41G 24G 18G 59% /usr /dev/sda6 16G 6.2G 9.9G 39% /var /dev/sdb1 135G 24G 105G 19% /backup
You should make sure that the disk which contains your eprints directory (usually /opt or /usr) is over 50% free. The backup of the archive will take up a similar amount of space to the archive itself so you should check you have enough space for it before starting.
Backup your database
cd <eprints_root>/backups
to change to your backups directory
mysqldump -u <db_user> -p <db_name> > <archive_id>.archive.backup-<year>-<month>-<day>.sql
at the prompt you will need to enter the password. If your repository is large this step can take a while. The purpose of the elaborate file name is so that at a glance you can tell what this file is. Also if you have multiple backups then ordering them alphabetically will put the backups for that archive in date order so you can find your most recent backup. Ending the file with .sql means you know it is a database backup.
If you do not no your db_user db_name or password for the above step you can find it by typing:
cat <eprints_root/archives/<archive_id>/cfg/cfg.d/database.pl
You should now have a .sql file containing your database backup in your <eprints_root>/backups directory.
Backup your archive
cd <eprints_root>/archives/
and then
tar czf <eprints_root>/backups/<archive_id>.archive.backup.-<year>-<month>-<day>.tgz <archive_id>
to create a zipped backup of your entire repository including static pages, documents, files and configuration. This can take a long time, for large repositories it can be several hours.
Backup your perl_lib
This step should not be necessary if you have followed the guide for making safe plugins. If you didn't follow the guide and modified perl_lib (for shame) or you are particularly paranoid you may want to backup your perl_lib directory.
cd <eprints_root>
and then
tar czf backups/<archive_id>.archive.backup.-<year>-<month>-<day>.tgz <perl_lib>
You should now be ready to upgrade.
Upgrading
Make sure you have re-read the list of things to know about upgrading your specific EPrints version up to the one you are moving to.