Updating ILIAS

This document explains how to updated from an earlier stable ILIAS version to a
newer ILIAS stable version:

BACKUP THE DATABASE, THE DATA DIRECTORY IN WEBSPACE AND THE DATA
DIRECTORY OUTSIDE WEBSPACE OF YOUR ILIAS INSTALLATION BEFORE DOING
ANY CHANGES! You find the pathes of both directories in the SETUP, section
BASIC SETTINGS.

In case you update from an ILIAS version 3.9 or lower, you must update first to
3.10.x before continuing the update.

We recommend not to update from an any alpha or beta version of ILIAS because
this may cause ambiguous errors in the future.

For major updates (e.g. 4.3.x -> 4.4.x) the safest proceeding is, to upgrade
a copy of your productive system first and test whether everything works ok.

Please also note that major updates usually include changes in the style
sheet and template files. So if you use custom styles/skins you will have
to adopt them for the new release first. This does usually not apply for bugfix
updates (e.g. 4.3.1 -> 4.3.2). IF YOU USE CUSTOM STYLES, PLEASE CHANGE THE
DEFAULT SKIN AND THE ROOT USER'S SKIN TO DELOS TO AVOID LOGIN AND
ADMINISTRATION PROBLEMS AFTER UPDATE DUE TO A BROKEN SKIN/STYLE.

At the time being no installation script is available for updating ILIAS. For
this reason the ILIAS script files must be updated manually. In the following
steps it is assumed that your existing ILIAS installation is located in
/opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/ while the contents of the ILIAS distribution tar
file lies in /tmp/. If the locations differ on your system you may need to adapt
the commands used in the following.

It is recommended to save the files ilias.ini.php located in the
main ILIAS directory which contains individual settings of your ILIAS
installation and chat/chatserver/server.ini which stores the setting for the
ilias chat server. After installing the new ILIAS release you may easily restore
these files.

Please note that the way user agreements, adapted language files and individual
skins and styles are stored has been changed with ILIAS 3.8.0. See
http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto.php?target=st_15914_367&client_id=docu
for more information.

cd /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias
rm *.php *.xml *.dtd *.css
rm -r classes content css docs images include java lang layouts libs
rm -r modules setup sql src sso templates xml assessment chat tracking
rm -r survey syntax_highlight course payment webservice ilinc link
rm -r cron Services calendar Modules

You may ignore any 'no such file or directory' errors because depending on
your current ILIAS installation some of the directories above may not exist on
your system.

Then extract the ILIAS distribution tar file to /tmp/ (or any other directory of
your choice). Do not simply overwrite the 'ilias' directory in your webspace!
Example:

cd /tmp
tar -xzf /opt/ilias/src/tarballs/ilias-4.2.3.tar.gz

After extracting the files you will find a newly created subdirectory 'ilias' in
your tmp/ directory. Depending on the ILIAS version you are replacing you must
copy various files and directories to your ILIAS web directory:

cd /tmp/ilias
cp -p * /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/
cp -rp classes cron docs include lang libs /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/
cp -rp Modules payment Services setup src sso templates /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/
cp -rp webservice xml /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/

Please ignore any 'File exists' error messages. After all files have been copied
you may remove /tmp/ilias/.

Copy your saved ilias.ini.php file to /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/.

Make sure that the apache user is the owner of all files using chown, e.g.
'chown -R wwwrun /opt/ilias/www/htdocs/ilias/'.

After installing a new ILIAS release you must run the setup script
'http://www.yourserver.com/ilias/setup/setup.php' and update the database of all
your clients. Select "Details" for every client in the client list and click on
the "Database" button. Depending on the size of your database the update process
may take a while.

This is especially the case for an update from 3.4.x or lower to 3.10.x because
all meta data will be converted into a new format. On big installations we
recommend to set the following values to avoid multiple restarts of the database
migration:

- Apache, httpd.conf:
Timeout = 3600
- PHP, php.ini:
memory_limit = 200M
max_execution_time = 3600

If the update unexpectedly stops, please restart the update until it finishes
successfully.

After that enter your clients and execute the "Refresh Languages" command
in the language administration of the system settings ("Administration" ->
"System Settings" -> "Languages" -> "Refresh Languages").