14 January, 2016

How to Upgrade ownCloud: Don't Skip Releases!

If my blog with 5 reasons to upgrade your ownCloud was convincing, you might want to know how. To help people who want to upgrade ownCloud, I always publish a .org blog about upgrading the day after a major ownCloud release. Upgrading any complex piece of software can be hard and while we do what we can to simplify it (with major work coming in that area for 9.0 and onwards) it is never smart to 'just' upgrade without reading documentation and release notes. But there's one tip I want to share in particular: don't try to skip releases!

Upgrade Process

We got excellent documentation on upgrading - read it. I also strongly recommend to have a quick look at the release notes before upgrading to a major release. Find the ownCloud 8.0 release notes here, 8.1 here and 8.2 here.

What you MUST know:
  • Do not skip any major releases. We have added code, at some point, to make this impossible - don't try to work around this but first upgrade to intermediate releases! This is also one of the reasons why regularly upgrading is a better idea than waiting to the very last moment and then upgrading multiple releases. Regularly upgrading exposes users to smaller user interface changes in each release and avoids a big 'flag day' where you have an extended downtime due to the upgrade process.
  • First upgrade to the very latest bugfix version of your current release. That gives you the benefit of all improvements we made to the upgrade process since the version you run. Count on upgrading from 8.0.5 to 8.1.x going smoother than going from 8.0.1 to 8.1.x!

So if you are, for example, on ownCloud 8.0.2 right now, first upgrade to the latest stable bugfix release (8.0.10). Then upgrade to the latest release in the 8.1 series, 8.1.5 as of this writing. Finally, you are ready to move to ownCloud 8.2.2. If you need packages for these intermediate releases, you can find them on owncloud.org/changelog.

I blogged on .org recently about the improvements to our upgrade process we've been working on.

Enjoy your fresh ownCloud ;-)

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