Preparing for an upgrade

Note: This article is for an old version of OpenX.

The latest OpenX documentation can be found at the following URLs:

Before you start the upgrade, prepare your OpenX environment:

Backup your system

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

The upgrade process guides you through synchronizing 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 lower case 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 of the 'Copy OpenX to your server' section.

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

To copy OpenX to your server:

Create a new directory with the same directory name as your previous installation, but add the newfiles suffix to the end of the directory name. For example: directoryname_newfiles.
Unpack the latest release of OpenX into this new directory.
Copy the configuration file from the current working location to the directoryname_newfiles/var directory of the new version.

The Configuration file locator provides the location of the configuration file in all versions you can upgrade from.
Copy your banner images from currentdirectory/www/images to directoryname_newfiles/www/images

More information: The banner images could be stored in a different location if you changed your banner settings. To check the location you have set for images, search for the webDir parameter in the configuration file.
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 var directory, such as directoryname/var/NOBACKUPS.
Add the _backup suffix to the end of the name of your existing working directory, to rename it as directoryname_backup.
Rename directoryname_newfiles by removing the newfiles suffix.

The following table shows where to find the configuration file in OpenX:

When you are satisfied that you have fully prepared the system, open a web browser and visit your OpenX website to start the upgrade wizard.