February 14, 2003
Movable Type Upgrade
The site is running 2.6 now. Hilights, I'm under a Creative Commons license now. Attribution Required, Non-Commercial, Derivative Works Allowed if they use the license I use. But upgrading was kind of a pain.I enjoy running Kung-Log as my blogging tool. I started it up tonight and a pop-up box came up saying, "Hey, new version! Upgrade upgrade upgrade! Click the pretty button!" Well, that's not exactly what it said. So I clicked the button and downloaded.
The download automatically opened the window for me to drag the application into place. Here's where I should have read the Readme. I didn't. I'd read them for all the other versions I downloaded and it was boring. So, I overwrote my previous installation. Tried to run. Errors. Checked the Readme. Surprise, the new Kung-Log requires Movable Type 2.6, which came out, like, an hour ago.
I don't like updating immediately. I like to wait for the inevitable x.x.1 release. But now I'm without my blogging tool. I went to all the version sites and couldn't find the old version of Kung-Log.
So, I decided to upgrade my movable type installation. I downloaded the thing. Then you have to copy all your files into your mt install directory - directory by recursive directory, since it's not all on one level. If you haven't upgraded before, it isn't clear what files to avoid. It says to NOT overwrite files you've modified, only files you haven't. Well, I've modified stuff through the web interface, does that count? It doesn't say. (After experimenting, the answer is NO. If you haven't modified anything on disk, you're okay.) So that took a while. Now I know a faster way, but there wasn't enough reassurance beforehand to make me feel like I wouldn't be a cowboy for doing it.
Then, there's all sorts of crazy instructions for upgrading. Basically, after you upgrade, your site doesn't have all the features enabled that it would have if you did a fresh install. I hate that. I guess it's the only way though since sometimes people make customizations after they install. So they have these extra instructions on how to enable things.
So I replaced all my templates with the new default versions, taking care to maintain the one set of customizations I did for my index page template. The instructions didn't tell me I had to do that, but I did notice subtle instructions in the new defaults from the ones in 2.51 that weren't mentioned, so I just did them all.
So it all looked okay. Things were working okay. I decided to enable my optional Creative Commons license. The form worked, and then there was a link to hook it back into the movable type system.
It failed, no error message. I posted a message on the site and then did some perl digging. It turns out the answer was to su to root and do a chgrp -R apache after the initial install instructions didn't require this.
The upgrade was more annoying and confusing than the install. Overall I give the upgrade process a C-, and a D if you factor in the Kung-Log upgrade trap I fell into. What can I say, I'm demanding. But if it turns out I have to upgrade to 2.61 in the next week, it's a big fat F.
Posted by Curt at February 14, 2003 01:11 AM