Live coverage of upgrading attempts. Several fails so far and maybe success at the end.

I’ve tried upgrading from ver 18 to ver 19 before but failed. Now I’ll try again, but all the way to ver 20.

My Nextcloud instance runs on shared hosting with no SSH access. I can only use occ commands from inside Nextcloud instance using OCCweb app. Also, I can edit files from CPanelfile manager. Let see how it goes….

To begin with, I backed up current Nextcloud instance ver 18 with Softaculous…

1. Upgrade to ver 19 within Nextcloud instance – fail

If you go to Settings –> Overview there should be a button like this one:

It seems I have to upgrade to the last  18 version before I can go to ver 19. Let’s try…

Stuck at step 3, Backup. After searching help forum for solution I got it unstuck by deleting certain .step file from nextcloud data folder I found in CPanel File Manager.

Let’s try again. Stuck again. Moving on…

2. Manual upgrade to ver 19 – fail

Manual upgrade following this link:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/16/admin_manual/maintenance/manual_upgrade.html

In short:

• backup
• upload Nextcloud.zip
• unpack
• copy config from old to new
• stop server
• replace old with new
• tidy up …

This method failed as well. It was maybe too much to expect that it will work because it was written for people who have full server access and a bit more knowledge than I have.

When on shared hosting, server cannot be stopped, therefore following the above procedure things just brake and I don’t know how to repair it.

Restored the 18 version from Softaculous backup.

3. Manual upgrade  try 2 to ver 19 – success!

User smiddy found out a bit different procedure based on the one above:

1. Upload the new nextcloud version to a new folder, e.g. nextcloudnew
2. enable maintenance mode by changing the config.php
3. copy the data folder from your existing nextcloud folder to nextcloudnew
4. copy the config/config.php to nextcloudnew/config
5. rename folder of old installation from nextcloud to nextcloudbak
6. rename folder of new installation from nextcloudnew to nextcloud
7. disable maintenance mode in config.php
8. Call your instance in a web browser, the update process will start as with the automatic upgrade process.

I didn’t know I could put server in maintenance mode by changing config.php!

After following all steps it upgraded. Thank you smiddy!

Lost Rainloop along the way. Copied it from nextcloud-old. Looks fine. Works. Documentserver for Onlyoffice is also gone. I’ll let’s leave this for Nextcloud 20. All contacts are here, Calendar is still synced with my Outlook and mobile. Everything looks suspiciously well…

Backup! I manged to do it with Softaculous… good boy Softaculous!

4. Softaculous upgrade to ver 20 – success 🙂

Upgrade steps within Softaculous went well (it even corrected the existing version number to 19) and I was instructed to open my Nextcloud instance in the browser to finish the upgrade.

Hello Nextcloud 20!

All apps updated. Looks good…  Good luck!