ownCloud Administrators Manual

Upgrading Your ownCloud Server

Updating and upgrading your ownCloud installation are two different tasks. Updating means updating to the next point release, which is indicated by the 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.) Please see Updating ownCloud with the Updater App for instructions on using the Updater app (Server only).

Upgrading your ownCloud server means upgrading to the next major ownCloud release. Major releases are indicated by the first and second digits. So 6.0, 7.0 and 8.0 are major releases. You may use the Updater app for staying current with new point releases (Server only), but not for upgrading to a major release.

The best method for keeping your ownCloud server on Linux servers current is by configuring your system to use the openSUSE Build Service, and then stay current by using your package manager to upgrade. You should still maintain regular backups (see Backing up ownCloud), and make a backup before every update/upgrade.

Windows server admins must use the manual upgrade procedure.

You cannot skip major releases; for example, upgrading from 5.0 to 7.0. This is unsupported, and you’ll experience unpredictable results. It is best to install all upgrades and updates in order.

Manual Upgrade Procedure

Start by putting your server in maintenance mode. Do this by entering your config.php file and changing 'maintenance' => false, to 'maintenance' => true,. This prevents new logins, and logged-in users can’t make any further requests.

  1. Ensure that you are running the latest point release of your current major ownCloud version.
  2. Deactivate all third party applications (not core apps), and review them for compatibility with your new ownCloud version.
  3. Back up your existing ownCloud Server database, data directory, and config.php file. (See Backing up ownCloud.)
  4. Download and unpack the latest ownCloud Server version from owncloud.org/install/ into an empty directory outside of your current installation. For example, if your current ownCloud is installed in /var/www/owncloud/ you could create a new directory called /var/www/owncloud2/
  5. Stop your web server.

Depending on your environment, you will be running either an Apache server or a Windows IIS server. To stop an Apache server, refer to the following table for specific commands to use in different Linux operating systems:

Operating System Command (as root)
CentOS/ Red Hat apachectl stop
Debian or Ubuntu /etc/init.d/apache2 stop

SUSE Enterprise Linux 11

openSUSE 12.3 and up

/usr/sbin/rcapache2 stop

systemctl stop apache2

To stop the Windows IIS web server, you can use either the user interface (UI) or command line method as follows:

Method Procedure
User Interface (UI)
  1. Open IIS Manager and navigate to the web server node in the tree.
  2. In the Actions pane, click Stop.
Command Line
  1. Open a command line window as administrator.
  2. At the command prompt, type net stop WAS and press ENTER.
  3. (Optional) To stop W3SVC, type Y and then press ENTER.

  1. Rename or move your current ownCloud directory (named owncloud/ if installed using defaults) to another location.

  2. Unpack your new tarball:

    tar xjf owncloud-latest.tar.bz2

    In Microsoft Windows environments, you can unpack the release tarball using WinZip or a similar tool (for example, Peazip). Always unpack server code into an empty directory. Unpacking the server code into an existing, populated directory is not supported and will cause all kinds of errors.

  3. This creates a new owncloud/ directory populated with your new server files. Copy this directory and its contents to the original location of your old server, for example /var/www/, so that once again you have /var/www/owncloud .

  4. Copy and paste the config.php file from your old version of ownCloud to your new ownCloud version.

  5. If you keep your data/ directory in your owncloud/ directory, copy it from your old version of ownCloud to the owncloud/ directory of your new ownCloud version. If you keep it outside of owncloud/ then you don’t have to do anything with it.

Note

We recommend storing your data/ directory in a location other than your owncloud/ directory. If you have your data/ directory already stored in another location, you can skip this step. If you want to do so, now is a good time to change the location of your data/ directory. See the “Advanced Options” chapter in Installation Wizard for more information about changing the default database or data directory.

  1. Restart your web server.

Depending on your environment, you will be running either an Apache server or a Windows IIS server. In addition, when running your server in a Linux environment, the necessary commands for stopping the Apache server might differ from one Linux operating system to another.

To start an Apache server, refer to the following table for specific commands to use in different Linux operating systems:

Operating System Command (as root)
CentOS/ Red Hat apachectl start
Debian or Ubuntu /etc/init.d/apache2 start

SUSE Enterprise Linux 11

openSUSE 12.3 and up

/usr/sbin/rcapache2 start

systemctl start apache2

To start the Windows IIS web server, you can use either the user interface (UI) or command line method as follows:

Method Procedure
User Interface (UI)
  1. Open IIS Manager and navigate to the web server node in the tree.
  2. In the Actions pane, click Stop.
Command Line
  1. Open a command line window as administrator.
  2. At the command prompt, type net stop WAS and press ENTER.
  3. (Optional) To stop W3SVC, type Y and then press ENTER.

  1. Now you should be able to open a web browser to your ownCloud server and log in as usual. You have a couple more steps to go: You should see a Start Update screen. Review the prequisites, and if you have followed all the steps click the Start Update button.

    If you are an enterprise customer, or are running a large installation with a lot of files and users, you should launch the update from the command line using occ to avoid timeouts, like this example on Ubuntu Linux:

    $ sudo -u www-data php occ upgrade

    Please see Using the occ Command to learn more about occ.

  2. The upgrade operation takes a few minutes, depending on the size of your installation. When it is finished you will see a success message, or an error message that will tell where it went wrong.

Assuming your upgrade succeeded, take a look at the bottom of the Admin page to verify the version number. Check your other settings to make sure they’re correct. Go to the Apps page and review the core apps to make sure the right ones are enabled.

Now you can review your third-party apps, and upgrade and enable them.