ownCloud Administrators Manual

Updating ownCloud

Update

Updating means updating ownCloud to the latest point release, e.g. ownCloud 4.0.6 → 4.0.7. To update an ownCloud installation manually, follow those steps:

Note

If you have installed ownCloud from a repository, your package management should take care of it.

  1. Make a backup.
  2. Unpack the release tarball in the owncloud directory, i.e. copy all new files into the ownCloud installation.
  3. Make sure that the file permissions are correct.
  4. After the next page request the update procedures will run.

Assuming your ownCloud installation is at ./owncloud/ and you want to update to the latest version, you could do the following:

Use rsync in archive mode (this leaves file owner, permissions, and time stamps untouched) to recursively copy all content from ./owncloud/ to a backup directory which contains the current date:

rsync -a owncloud/ owncloud_bkp`date +"%Y%m%d"`/

Download the latest version to the working directory:

wget http://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-latest.tar.bz2

Extract content of archive to ./owncloud_latest/:

mkdir owncloud_latest; tar -C owncloud_latest -xjf owncloud-latest.tar.bz2

Use rsync to recursivly copy extracted files (new) to ownCloud installation (old) using modification times of the new files, but preserving owner and permissions of the old files:

Warning

You should not use this [–inplace] option to update files that are being accessed by others (from rysnc man page)

rsync --inplace -rtv owncloud_latest/owncloud/ owncloud/

Clean up:

rm -rf owncloud-latest.tar.bz2 owncloud_latest/

Upgrade

Note

The update to 5.0 is currently discouraged for users of the encryption app. A rewrite of the encryption will be released in a few weeks. If you have already upgraded to 5.0 you will not be able to decrypt your files. The solution to this is to downgrade to the old version again. Also make a backup before you downgrade!

Upgrade is to bring an ownCloud instance to a new major release, e.g. ownCloud 4.0.7 → 4.5.0. Always do backups anyway.

To upgrade ownCloud, follow those steps:

  1. Make sure that you ran the latest point release of the major ownCloud version, e.g. 4.0.7 in the 4.0 series. If not, update to that version first (see above).
  2. Make a backup of the ownCloud folder and the database
  3. Deactivate all third party applications.
  4. Delete everything from your ownCloud installation directory, except data and config.
  5. Unpack the release tarball in the owncloud directory (or copy the files thereto).
  6. Make sure that the file permissions are correct.
  7. With the next page request the update procedures will run.
  8. If you had 3rd party applications, check if they provide versions compatible with the new release.

If so, install and enable them, update procedures will run if needed. 9. If you installed ownCloud from a repository, your package management should take care of it. Probably you will need to look for compatible third party applications yourself. Always do backups anyway.