ownCloud Administrators Manual

Updating ownCloud with the Updater App

The Updater app automates many of the steps of updating an ownCloud installation to the next point release. The Updater app should be enabled in your ownCloud instance by default, which you can easily confirm by looking on your Apps page.

Updating and upgrading your ownCloud installation are two different tasks. Updating means updating to the next point release, which is indicated by third digit of the version number. For example, 6.0.4 and 7.0.4 are point releases. (Look at the bottom of your Admin page to see your version number.)

Major releases are indicated by the first and second digits. So 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 are major releases. The Updater app is not for upgrades; please see Upgrading Your ownCloud Server for instructions on upgrading to a major release.

If you installed ownCloud from our openSUSE Build Service repositories or your own Linux distribution repositories, then it is best to update/upgrade ownCloud using your package manager rather than using the Updater app or upgrading manually. You should still maintain regular backups (see Backing up ownCloud), and make a backup before every update/upgrade.

The Updater app performs these operations:

  • Creates a backup directory under your ownCloud data directory
  • Download and extracts updated package content into the backup/packageVersion directory
  • Makes a copy of your current ownCloud instance, except for your data directory, to backup/currentVersion-randomstring
  • Moves all directories except data, config and themes from the current instance to backup/tmp
  • Moves all directories from backup/packageVersion to the current version
  • Updates the ownCloud database
  • Copies your old config.php to the new config/ directory

Using the Updater app to upgrade your ownCloud installation is just a few steps:

  1. You should see a notification at the top of any ownCloud page when there is a new update available:
../_images/updater-1.png
  1. Even though the Updater app backs up important directories, you should always have your own current backups (See Backing up ownCloud for details.)
  2. Verify that the HTTP user on your system can write to your whole ownCloud directory; see Setting Strong Permissions.
  3. Navigate to your ‘Admin’ page and click the ‘Update Center’ button under Updater:
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  1. This takes you to the Updater control panel.
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  1. Click Update, and carefully read the messages. If there are any problems it will tell you. The most common issue is directory permissions; see Setting Strong Permissions. Otherwise you will see a message about checking your installation, making a backup, and moving files:
../_images/updater-4.png
  1. Click Proceed, and then it downloads the updates, which may take a few minutes:
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  1. The Update app wants you to be very sure you want to update, and so you must click one more button, the Start Update button:
../_images/updater-6.png

Note

If you have a large ownCloud installation, at this point you should use the occ upgrade command, running it as your HTTP user, instead of clicking Start Update, in order to avoid PHP timeouts. This example is for Ubuntu Linux:

$ sudo -u www-data php occ upgrade

See Using the occ Command to learn more about using the occ command.

  1. It works for a few minutes, and when it is finished displays a success message, which disappears after a short time.
../_images/updater-7.png

Refresh your Admin page to verify your new version number.

If the Updater app fails, then you must update manually. See Upgrading Your ownCloud Server to learn how to upgrade manually.

Setting Strong Permissions

For hardened security we highly recommend setting the permissions on your ownCloud directory as strictly as possible. These commands should be executed immediately after the initial installation. Please follow the steps in the Setting Strong Directory Permissions section of Installation Wizard.

These strict permissions will prevent the Updater app from working, as it needs your whole ownCloud directory to be owned by the HTTP user. The generic command to change ownership of all files and subdirectories in a directory to the HTTP user is:

chown -R <http-user>:<http-user> /path/to/owncloud/

  • This example is for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server:

    chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud

  • Arch Linux:

    chown -R http:http /path/to/owncloud/

  • Fedora:

    chown -R apache:apache /path/to/owncloud/

  • openSUSE:

    chown -R wwwrun:www /path/to/owncloud/

After the Updater app has run, you should re-apply the strict permissions.