• Registered: 01/08/2009
  • Posts: 16

Topic: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

I will be relocating my front accounting installation to a new server and thought this would be a good opportunity to upgrade the software to the lastest version. However, I have not been able to find much information regarding upgrading from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

I have modified my code a bit, and a few tables, so the upgrade will not be straight forward, but I am willing to lose the changes I made in an effort to get to a clean new installation with my company data.

In the event that this process is unfeasable, I have already copied the 2.0.6 tables and files to the new server, but I can't get the login page to come up. it's just blank. no errors. PHP and MySQL are working. Its a shiny new xampp installation.

Can anyone please offer me some help? Or at least point me to a forum topic I may have missed?

  • From: UK, Scotland, Aberdeen
  • Registered: 04/21/2010
  • Posts: 30

Re: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

The first thing is probably to turn on debugging and have a look in the log files.  PHP has an unpleasant habit of showing a blank page when it's unhappy.

W

  • Registered: 01/08/2009
  • Posts: 16

Re: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

Thanks for the tip Worrab... now instead of a login screen, or a blank page, I get:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare date_diff() in C:\xampp\htdocs\erp\includes\date_functions.inc  on line 430

Maybe this can shed some light on the problem for you or someone else? It doesn't mean much to me. I'm going to look into it, but I don't have high hopes of figuring it out myself.

Thanks

  • Registered: 01/08/2009
  • Posts: 16

Re: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

Ok, I resolved the problem. It is the fact that date_diff() exists as a function in php 5.3 and also in FA... so I renamed the 3 occurrances of the use of date_diff in FA to diff_date and it works. But now I'm concerned about the possibility of other functions and stuff causing problems down the road.

So now that I've got FA 2.0.6 up and running on the new server, I am back to my original question... can someone help me figure out how to upgrade to 2.2.9?

Thanks
Rob

  • From: UK, Scotland, Aberdeen
  • Registered: 04/21/2010
  • Posts: 30

Re: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

In the absence of more informed contributors, have you had a look at https://frontaccounting.com/wbt/pages/download/update-guide.php ?

In your position, I'd create a fresh installation of 2.2.9 on a local (spare) server and work with that.  Once happy, push the necessary changes back to your main machine.

Whilst ignorant of the older versions of FA, my experience of making step changes in large database-backed systems is that the problems generally arise when a new, not NULL field having no default value is introduced and the restoration of data falls in a heap - fortunately easily remedied.

If you've made any changes to the reports, remember to transfer those onto the new system as well.

Hope it goes OK.

W

  • Registered: 12/25/2007
  • Posts: 2,448

Re: Upgrade from 2.0.6 to 2.2.9

Upgrade process should be fairly simply. You have replicated your installation together with database content, so you can test the process safely:
. update all your FA php files by overwriting them with files for version 2.2.9;
. login as  first company admin;
. go to Setup/Software Upgrade and perform upgrade to FA 2.1,  then to FA 2.2.
. logout
. make needed changes in config.php file.
. login again - all should work right.

In case of any failure you have to restore database from backup files automatically created during upgrade, fix the source of problem, then try again. In case of smaller problems sometimes forced upgrade works just right.

If you have made some php scripts customizations you have to apply the changes again to the new sources manually - there was a lot of changes during last 2 major releases in literally all files, so I guess no automatic patching would work.

If you will gain some experience, please share it writing wiki entry and/or continue the thread.

Janusz