How to upgrade a running installation?

Installation & maintenance
1

Dear Team
I am reading the Standalone — Python documentation
Alternatively, how should one setup this so that one can do upgrade or updates? Is it possible directly within the interface(web browser)?
Thank you

2

Hello,

thanks for your inquiries. On openBIS Server Installation — Python documentation it is mentioned that it is recommended to install openBIS into a new directory, not matching the previous installation directory. If the directory specified in the console.properties next to INSTALL_PATH does match an existing installation directory, openBIS will detect the existing installation and execute the upgrade.sh script. However, this script is going to be decommissioned in the near future, and we’d therefore recommend to do a fresh installation. This is also recommended in order to have an easier way of rolling back the upgrade, if this should be needed.

Note that any changes having previously been applied to the following files will have to be re-applied within the new installation:

  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/service.properties
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/web-client.properties
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/openbis.conf
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/capabilities
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/passwd (controlled via servers/openBIS-server/jetty/bin/passwd.sh)
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/passwd.sv (controlled via servers/openBIS-server/jetty/bin/passwd.sh)
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/start.d/http.ini
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/start.d/https.ini
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/etc/start.d/ssl.ini
  • servers/openBIS-server/jetty/webapps/openbis/WEB-INF/classes/etc/log.xml
  • servers/datastore_server/etc/service.properties
  • servers/datastore_server/etc/datastore_server.conf
  • servers/datastore_server/etc/log.xml

This list is not complete, since in principle you may also have made changes to other files. In particular, pay attention to core-plugins. If you have made changes to core plugins shipped with the installation, those need to be re-applied also in the new installation. The same applies to custom core plugins that are not part of the installation (e.g., customer-developed plugins).

Before upgrading, a general recommendation is to take a dump of the databases (usually, openbis_prod and pathinfo_prod). When starting up the new installation with the correct configuration, it loads the same databases. It is usually no problem to roll back minor release upgrades. However, for major upgrades, database migrations are applied that can not be rolled back - if a rollback is necessary, you will need to restore the database dumps created before starting up the application from the new installation.

Note that we’re currently in a transitioning phase to providing full support for docker-based deployments of openBIS, which will largely simplify the upgrade procedure. For that reason, the above-mentioned recommendations are not outlined on our readthedocs pages.