[LON-CAPA-admin] Re: upgrading

[Matthew Brian Hall]

Hi Lars, 

> We're planning to upgrade from RH 7.3 this break. Is any documentation
> on this available somewhere ?

The question has been asked before on the mailing list.  Our
recommendations are to: 

1. Back up your /home directory and make sure any code that you use
  which is not part of the base LON-CAPA installation (local
  authentication code, for example) is backed up as well.  Backup
  /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, and /etc/gshadow, as well as
  any other configuration files you have (samba, sendmail, etc).
  Backup /etc/httpd/conf/loncapa.conf, to someplace where you can
  retrieve it easily.  If you have implemented auto-enrollment ensure
  that any required utilities, configuration files, and your custom
  version of localenroll.pm are backed up. 

2. Do a clean install (not an upgrade) of the operating system as per
  the instructions on http://install.loncapa.org/.  If /home is a
  separate partition you can leave it unformatted to avoid step 3. 

3. Restore your /home directory 

4. Restore your /etc/httpd/conf/loncapa.conf 

5. Install LON-CAPA as per the instructions. 

6. Install whatever else you need (authentication code, samba config
  files, etc).  If you have filesystem authenticated users to restore
  do so by copying the appropriate lines from the saved passwd,
  shadow, groups, and gshadow files.  If you have users with
  old-style crypt passwords you should probably re-create the users
  and give them MD5 passwords. 

  If you have implemented auto-enrollment, install your custom
  version of localenroll.pm and any utilities required to connect to
  institutional data sources. 

The Fedora Core 2 install seems really easy to me.  Granted, I've done
the install an uncountable number of times, but I think it is pretty
fast and relatively painless. 

We're working the kinks out of the FC3 installation & configuration
and will have it done in time for the next release.  I suggest you
wait for the announcement of that before your upgrade if you can. 

Matthew 


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Matthew Hall           hallmat3 at msu.edu
LON-CAPA developer
Michigan State University
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