Magento

What is the proper way to upgrade my Magento installation? I have upgraded without any problems since 1.0 but there is always a disclaimer that says:

“Note: We do not recommend upgrading directly on a production environment.”

Everytime I upgrade I get a little nervous that everything might break. Since I am in production now, what is the best way to prevent a disaster? If I make a backup in the admin by going to System>Tools>Backups will I be able to roll back to a previous installation easily?

Thanks!

Firstly, my advise is to set up a development environment that is a copy of your production environment. Then you are able to test each update first after submitting it to the production env.

Another hint is always to wait sometimes after the update is released. So you can check the experiences of other users with the upgrade.

I’m a bit new to this but how does one go about setting up a test environment? I can’t just copy the entire store into a test directory can I?

Thanks!

switchroyale - 17 September 2008 09:27 AM

I’m a bit new to this but how does one go about setting up a test environment? I can’t just copy the entire store into a test directory can I?

Thanks!

Take a look at a program called XAMPP.. you can run it off a folder on your hard drive. It creates a mini web server and database. You can get the portable edition from portableapps.com, that’s what I use to run my Dev site off a flash drive
You’ll need to copy your website files into the /htdocs folder, and import your database into mySQL with phpAdmin. It’s a little convoluted, but it has decent documentation

switchroyale - 16 September 2008 05:11 PM

What is the proper way to upgrade my Magento installation? I have upgraded without any problems since 1.0 but there is always a disclaimer that says:

“Note: We do not recommend upgrading directly on a production environment.”

It’s a safety clause really, and just smart practice. If you must upgrade a live, production environment, make sure you create a full site backup before doing so! That way if anything goes wrong, you can revert back to when everything was working.

This might not always be the case for some stores though with things changing constantly, so another option would be to have a “staging” area, or a cloned version of your production store that you can test upgrades on. If everything goes smoothly there, then you can safely upgrade on the live site (but that doesn’t mean you can skip out on creating a backup).

As for how to upgrade, there are two ways. If no SuExec is being used for PHP (like suPHP or FastCGI), then you must upgrade Magento from SSH. You CANNOT upgrade Magento in a non-suexec’ed environment using the web-based upgrader since it will run as user nobody. You’ll likely have a botched upgrade and/or some extensions won’t update completely. When you run this from SSH, you’re running everything not as user nobody, but the user who actually owns the files (with the exception of Magento-generated files, like cache files).

Otherwise, feel free to continue using Magento Connect to upgrade.

Thanks for the reply! My store is actually on Crucial Webhosting. I went into the cpanel and made a full backup of the site using the backup tool. Would it be easy to revert to the backup if something broke?

I went ahead and did the upgrade to 1.1.5 this afternoon without any problems but I’d like to know what course of action to take just in case things don’t go as planned in the future.

Crucial - 17 September 2008 12:48 PM

switchroyale - 16 September 2008 05:11 PM

What is the proper way to upgrade my Magento installation? I have upgraded without any problems since 1.0 but there is always a disclaimer that says:

As for how to upgrade, there are two ways. If no SuExec is being used for PHP (like suPHP or FastCGI), then you must upgrade Magento from SSH.

.

So, where do we find the documentation on how to upgrade with SSH? I know how to install with it but not upgrade…

Thanks

Furthermore, WHERE THE *&*! is the actual page that gives instructions on how to upgrade properly???? I am so frustrated with all the assumptions of people knowing how to do this or where to find the info when it’s byzantine.

I don’t see ANYTHING that has it in one place. This is starting to look like OSCommerce documentation… all over the place. Already. Not good.

Folks, great product. Great idea. Just a few helpful instructions for some basic &^%! like HOW TO UPGRADE, both with the mysterious MAGENTO CONNECT Manager (where is documentation? I can’t find it) and with SSH. I didn’t even know that it was possible to do it with SSH until reading this post, but as is sadly so often the case, where is the actual documentation for HOW to do it?

I know SSH. I know web design. I know a goodly amount of PHP and SQL. But I have no idea how to APPLY it for Magento upgrades. And they are happening so often.

Someone help out? HOW TO PROPERLY UPGRADE in the UPGRADE ISSUES forum would be a great place to have this info… Would love to use Magento, can’t find out how. I got tired of OSC for this exact reason. Too much of a maze, not enough actual information. Was hoping this would be different.

Thanks.

switchroyale - 17 September 2008 12:54 PM

Thanks for the reply! My store is actually on Crucial Webhosting. I went into the cpanel and made a full backup of the site using the backup tool. Would it be easy to revert to the backup if something broke?

I went ahead and did the upgrade to 1.1.5 this afternoon without any problems but I’d like to know what course of action to take just in case things don’t go as planned in the future.

In the event that an upgrade went wrong, we would first look at the errors (if any) to see if it’s not something trivial, like not deleting the cache directory after upgrading. If that wasn’t the case, we would either use a daily backup that we keep or yours. Once your site was back to how it used to be, someone from Crucial would attempt to perform the upgrade.

The full site backup you create in cPanel is just that, it has everything for your site (mail accounts, email forwarders, stats, databases, etc.). So it’d be easy to revert back.

Mishagos - 17 September 2008 07:40 PM

So, where do we find the documentation on how to upgrade with SSH? I know how to install with it but not upgrade…

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/upgrading_magento#using_ssh_shell_access

You’ll want to try this command first:

If you get a message saying there’s nothing to upgrade, do this instead:

Instructions for upgrading via Magento Connect are in the link above. If you login to Magento Connect and no extensions are listed, you need to type this into the Extension Key area:

It will download all the packages and upgrade Magento.

Thank you. Now *that* was helpful!

OK, but how do I add extensions from the Community?  Anybody have any documentation on that?  I’ve been looking everywhere and cannot find simple instructions.  My host recommends upgrading via SSH and has shut off access to The Connect Manager.

ErotoToys - 04 October 2008 04:21 AM

OK, but how do I add extensions from the Community?  Anybody have any documentation on that?  I’ve been looking everywhere and cannot find simple instructions.  My host recommends upgrading via SSH and has shut off access to The Connect Manager.

You need to get the “extension key” from Magento Connect - link is at the top of the page.  Just find the extension, for instance ‘clickandbuy’ (community extension), then get the extension;

http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/531/clickandbuy

Then you would have already read this page from above; http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/upgrading_magento#using_ssh_shell_access

So, now you can install the clickandbuy extension using the above extension key, like so;

Hope this helps.