Upgrade possibility

Hi
first of all let me thank you for your really great work , i was working on Tomcat and Liferay for a long time and i had lots of problem to install it on my Ubuntu Linux , it faced errors that i could not solve them, so i used your package and everything is right…

i have one question : is it possible to upgrade the liferay portal or customize it myself or i should wait for you to apply upgrades by releasing new bundle ?

HI Hisitech,

We try to update all stacks in the short time possible. We are testing the new Stack with Liferay 4.3.5 and probably release the next week.

You can update the application manually. You can follow these steps:

1- Create a backup. It’s advisable to backup the database and the application after to upgrade. You can execute this command to create a database backup (mysql should be running). For example:

(install_dir)/mysql/bin$ ./mysqldump – -all-databases > liferay_backup.sql -u root -p – -socket=../tmp/mysql.sock

Then, stop all servers:

(install_dir)$ ./ctlscript.sh stop

Move application files to another directory, for example:

$ mv (install_dir)/apache-tomcat/webapps/liferay (install_dir)/liferay-old

2- Download and unzip new application files. Download liferay-portal- (new_version) – with-dependencies.war at sourforge.net.
Then unzip the file into a directory and move to web applications directory, for example:

$ mkdir liferay

$ unzip liferay-portal- (new_version) – with-dependencies.war -d liferay

$ mv liferay (install_dir)/apache-tomcat/webapps/

3- Copy custom files. You have to copy or replace some files since liferay-old directory at the same location in new liferay:

$ cp (install_dir)/liferay_old/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties (install_dir)/apache-tomcat/webapps/liferay/WEB-INF/classes/

$ cp -r (install_dir)/liferay_old/META-INF (install_dir)/apache-tomcat/webapps/liferay/

4- Restart application.

(install_dir)$ ./ctlscript.sh start

We are working on a upgrade BitNami applications guide and in the future we consider to create upgrade installers.
If you have any problem, please post in this forum and we try to help you.

Beltran, thanks for your clear instructions.

I’ve tried following this procedure in upgrading the bitnami liferay stack 5.0.1 to the latest liferay version (5.1.). On both a ubuntu server and a windows xp workstation, I get the same result: after successful install of the bitnami stack and successful results in the browser, I shut down the service and follow the above instructions. However, upon restarting the service pointing my browser to http://localhost:8080/liferay redirects to http://localhost:8080/liferay/c/portal/layout, and the error “You do not have permission to view this page.” appears in a web page with the new Liferay 5.1 style. The apache-tomcat log file says

Aug 4, 2008 4:45:31 PM org.apache.catalina.realm.JAASRealm parseClassNames
SEVERE: Class com.liferay.portal.security.jaas.PortalPrincipal not found! Class not added.

There seems to be a discussion about that same error at http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@tomcat.apache.org/msg19820.html, but it refers to a tomcat version I don’t think we have in the bitnami stack.

I’m a bit stumped. Can anyone confirm Betran’s helpful and clear instructions (above) work in an upgrade from 5.0.1 to 5.1?

Hi Kirk,

Could you check that exits the portal-impl.jar into the apache-tomat/webapps/liferay/WEB-INF/lib folder? I have the same problem in the past and I resolved using the liferay-portal-(version).war instead of (-with-dependencies).

Also you can dump the mysql database, install the BitNami Liferay Stack 5.1.0 in other folder and then restore the database.

I hope it helps you.

Beltran, sorry not to respond sooner: I saw you had updated the bitnami stack to 5.1.0, so I simply installed that stack from scratch (which worked great).

So I’ve just tried to upgrade the 5.1.0 stack to 5.1.1, using the steps above and using the simple liferay-portal-5.1.1.war (not using the “liferay-portal-5.1.1-with-dependencies.war”). But I again find the same PortalPrincipal error. I confirm that the portal-impl.jar does indeed exist in the apache-tomat/webapps/liferay/WEB-INF/lib folder. Maybe there’s something else I can try? Or should I just wait for the stack to be updated to 5.1.1? :-)

To be honest, I’m so spoiled now with the stack doing the install work for me that I’ll be quite happy to wait for the new stack to come out. Thanks as always for your help. It’s easy to forget how much these stacks help out with the install process, until I have to do it again.

Hi Kirk,

We are working to update the Liferay Stack and we will release the 5.1.1 Stack soon.

Regards

OK! Great to hear… some new features in that release are useful for corporate environments, like ours.