Prepare for the upgrade

Before you start the upgrade, prepare your OpenX environment:

1. Backup your system
2. Prepare the database
3. Download OpenX
4. Copy OpenX to your server

Backup your system

Important: Backup your OpenX directory and your database before starting the upgrade.

Prepare the database

The upgrade process guides you through synchronising your old and new databases. But there can be additional preparations:

• Lowercase table prefixes: If your existing database contains prefixes that use capital letters, you must change all prefixes to lowercase before you perform the upgrade.
• Large database: During the upgrade, OpenX copies each affected table, which can be very time-consuming for large databases. To avoid this process, create a file named "NOBACKUPS" in the var/ directory for your new version of OpenX. When the Install Wizard detects this file, it does not copy tables.
  Note: This procedure is described in Step 3 in the Copy OpenX to your server section.

Download OpenX

Download the latest version of OpenX from the OpenX website to your local computer.

Copy OpenX to your server

To copy OpenX to your server:

1. Create a new directory with the same directory name as your previous installation, but add "_newfiles" to the end of the directory name, for example directoryname_newfiles.
2. Unpack the latest release of OpenX into this new directory.
3. Copy the configuration file from the current working location to the directoryname_newfiles/var directory of the new version.
   More information: The Configuration file location table provides the location of the configuration file in all versions you can upgrade from.
4. Copy your banner images from currentdirectory/www/images to directoryname_newfiles/www/images
   More information: Your banner images might be located in a different location if you have customized your banner settings. You can check what folder you have set by opening your configuration file and looking for the 'webDir' parameter.
5. If you have a large database and do not want to wait while OpenX copies all database tables affected by the upgrade, create a file named "NOBACKUPS" in the directoryname/var/NOBACKUPS.
6. Add "_backup" to the end of the name of your existing working directory, to rename it as "directoryname_backup".
7. Rename directoryname_newfiles by removing the "_newfiles" suffix.

The following table shows where to find the configuration file in your old version of OpenX:

Configuration file location

Next step: Upgrade wizard

When you are satisfied that you have fully-prepared the system, in a web browser, visit your OpenX website to launch the Install and Upgrade wizard.