paul.mcilfatrick@bt.com wrote:
We have been happily using OTRS 1.3.1 on Suse 9 since 2005 and it has been working flawlessly (I know v1.3.1 is very old but works the way we want it so there has never been an incentive to upgrade!) .
A feature we use is FreeText fields which we pre-fill using an sql statement in a Perl script that is run when an new ticket with a keyword in its subject field is automatically moved to a certain queue.
This is interesting, can you explain how have you done it?
This brings me to thinking about upgrading as our system is old but we only have our working system and we have no backup system that I can test a upgrade on. Also, I have inherited the OTRS system so I do not know much about it.
The upgrade process is straighforward unless you have customized otrs modifying PM files. You can do a test upgrade during your off-peak times by backing up your DB and backing up the entire OTRS directory. Just remember to "suspend" getting email from your incoming otrs mail account , aka comment out a cron job: this way if something goes wrong, at least you can restore your previous OTRS without loosing any regular email. Otherwise you can temporarily change your OTRS email (from OTRS configuration) to a new account, just for testing incoming emails, so your original mailbox will be left untouched in case of rollback. We had some problems regarding the DB upgrade but we switched from MSSQL to MYSQL during the process, so if you already are on mysql you should experience no problems.
Question:
From reading the various documents it seems that the process of upgrading OTRS must be done in steps. Am I correct in that I cannot go from version 1.3.1 straight to the present version but must do it in steps. If I am correct, what steps must be taken to get up to the current version of OTRS?
The steps involve upgrading the database by using the provided scripts in the tar.gz you downloaded and replace OTRS files. The rest of OTRS (PM configuration) can be imported, if I remember well. Maybe docs or other people can help you better than me for this part.
Question:
Reading the UPGRADING file that came with version 1.3.1 (I see that it is present in every subsequent release) one of its points says "Backup everything (database, Kernel/Config.pm, Kernel/Config/GenericAgent.pm, var/*)".
I can backup the files and directories mentioned but is there any documentation of how to backup the MySQL database as I have little experience with it?
For mysql just do from shell: $ mysqldump otrsdbname >otrsdump.sql Then backup the entire OTRS directory. The mysql documentation is your friend: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html -- Greetings, Stefano Coletta Unidata S.p.a. Via Portuense, 1555 - 00143 Roma Commercity - Modulo M25 Tel +39 06404041 Fax +39 0640404002 E-mail s.coletta@unidata.it