Driftwork,

The official documentation is here: http://docs.elgg.org/wiki/Upgrading_Elgg

However you should first ask yourself, and try to find out why, overwriting the existing files has failed. I suggest that you let your server admin do this part if you have no direct shell access,

If you do this yourself with plain old FTP then let the server admin beforehand set the ownership or group of all Elgg files (the data store files can remain as is) and directory access rights so that you can overwrite them with your FTP user.

After you have the right files you can proceed with the next steps. Check for example the files in the mod/groups directory to see if you now have the same files that are in the distribution.

Regards,
Gerrit

Nice finding Gerrit. @driftwork May be the Elgg download was incomplete. Check the "Groups" folder of the Elgg version that you downloaded.

Also you may try upgrading again. Here is a guide on upgrading.  I hope it helps.

Rodolfo Hernandez
Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

Thanks for the advice. 

There is, of course, one major difference between these two upgrade guides.

The official ELGG upgrade guide says disable all 'non-core' plugins before upgrading.

The Arvixe one -which is very useful by the way since I am also using Cpanel- tells us to to disable ALL plugins.

In retrospect, I think disabling ALL plugins might have been the better choice.

I have managed to get The RiverDashBoard and Groups to work by following Gerrit's advice.

I fully deleted and uploaded and installed and -what I know to be- the newest version of 'Groups' directly from my 1.7.6 folder and it seems to be working.

Thank you.

Can you recommend a further course of action to make sure everything is stable?

Should I be going through each plugin to check the version number?

Is there anything else that I can do to make sure my install is stable?

There are still some plugin compatibility issues (which I guess is the case with all upgrades) most notably with:

Custom_Index and the older Izap Video Plugin.

Header_Menu's style and formatting is messed up.

etc....

Thanks

Also, at this point, if its possible to 'roll back' and do a restore of my site BEFORE all of these problems and do a NEW fresh upgrade, should I do it?

I'm really worried about new problems that will come up as a result of this chimera that has been created.

Thanks

If you wanna see if an old plugin is compatible with newer versions of Elgg you may consider installing Elgg on your computer and test those plugins before putting them on a live site.

I put to disable all plugins because I've seen they do that here in the Elgg Community everytime they upgrade the version, so I thought that could be a good advice for users.

If you can roll back, make a backup of everything (database, Elgg) and then make a new upgradE. It is strongly recommended that you upgrade your Elgg install.

Rodolfo Hernandez
Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

Hello driftwork,

I think making sure that you have a solid base to work on is always very important. If you soldier on with the present install, where it is unknown which program files come from 1.7.1 and which come from 1.7.6 and where extra files may be present that should have been deleted or files not added which should have been added then nobody else can support that even if you could. If you can't prove that only the groups module went wrong then you have to restore and upgrade again to get a good base to work on. You should also check if the database column was added I mentioned earlier on.

About disabling the plugins. This is a safety mechanism because then the upgrade command won't have to deal with possible interference by the program files of plugins that get included and influence data or routines in the core program files. Because the upgrade command doesn't need any of the plugins and can't predict if it is going to be affected by them, it is wise to take this precaution. Again this is about establishing a solid base which you can build on.

Regards,
Gerrit Venema
Gol Gol

MAKE a backup of your present files and datastore and database in case restoring an old version turns out to be impossible.

One remark about upgrade and restore. You MUST restore all three stores (database, data store and webroot files) from the same point in time where you are sure that everything was version 1.7.1.

When you go about restoring your old site you SHOULD block access to it for everyone except yourself. You can use this in your .htaccess file

order deny, allow
deny from all
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your ip (assuming you are on ipv4 of course)

Also make sure that there are NO cron processes running for Elgg if you installed any.

Reason is you wouldn't want anything written to the database while it is being upgraded, and it doesn't seem the Elgg upgrade process blocks others from writing during the upgrade. Of course if nobody is on your site and their are no cron processes running for Elgg it doesn't matter.

When you restored your old site make sure it works. Now you can prepare the upgrade by disabling all plugins that didn't come with Elgg 1.7.1 itself. You should leave those that came with Elgg and that you used enabled because they can contain upgrades themselves.

Then copy all files from the 1.7.6 distribution into your webroot. Make especially sure that version.php now contains $version = 2010071002. Make sure that /engine/lib/upgrades contains all files from the 1.7.6. distribution and the same for /engine/schema/upgrades.

DON'T access the new site yet. You should ONLY call yoursite/upgrade.php

After your browser returned, check in the database if the datalists table contains the 2010071002 version  and the time_created column exists in the entity_relationships table.

Then turn to the .htaccess, don't access your site yet.

You HAVE to overwrite your existing .htaccess from 1.7.1 with the htaccess_dist that comes with 1.7.6. This is not always necessary, but it has changed drastically. Just note if you made changes to .htaccess like setting a different RewriteBase and copy those changes to the new htaccess_dist. You might want to retain the access blocking rules described above.

Overwrite the existing .htaccess with the htaccess_dist.

NOW you can access your 1.7.6 Elgg and check it out. Try new plugins.

When everything is to your liking re-enable access to your site for others. Reactivate cron jobs if you had any and test if they work also.

I hope this will be of use to anyone stuck in such a situation.

Regards,

Gerrit Venema
Gol Gol community

http://golgol.nl

Driftwork, others,

A word of caution about using allow,deny rules in your .htaccess. Do not use this if you depend on some web administrative interface which uses an URL in the same directory as Elgg or below that. If you can access and change the .htaccess file with FTP or shell then it is ok to use these rules.

Regards,

Gerrit

My Vazco Gmap doesn't work in 1.7.6 so far. No icons showing up, I am staying 1.7.4 for now.

Thanks so much to everyone for the excellent advice.

Especially Gerrit, Thanks!

I will report back to this thread on my progress.

I will try to roll back things to my original 1.7.1 with your recommendations in mind.

Should I perhaps only upgrade to 1.7.4 or is in advisable to go to 1.7.6?