Upgrading CollectionSpace

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Dec 19, 2022
5 min read

Prerequisites

Before upgrading your CollectionSpace server, make sure you have a viable backup of your installation that can be restored if any problems occur. A whole-system backup or VM snapshot is preferred, but at a minimum, the following should be backed up:

  • Databases - Use pg_dump to create archives of all postgres databases, and store the archives in a safe location.

  • Source code - Back up the CollectionSpace source code directories on your server. These directories are named services and application. Depending on how you installed ColllectionSpace, these might be in /home/cspace/collectionspace-source, or /opt/collectionspace. These directories need to be backed up because you may have made configuration changes there – for example, to create tenants.

  • Tomcat - Back up the tomcat directory on your server. Tomcat is typically located at either /usr/local/share/apache-tomcat-{version}, or /opt/collectionspace/apache-tomcat-{version}. Substitute {version} with the number that exists on your server. This will vary with the CollectionSpace version – for example, 8.5.51 for CollectionSpace 6.1.

Before continuing, ensure that tomcat is not running.

Upgrading from CollectionSpace 6.1

Tomcat

The tomcat server remains the same for v7.0. No upgrade is needed.

Upgrade Source Code

Perform the following steps as the user you use to build and deploy CollectionSpace – typically, either cspace or collectionspace.

CollectionSpace source code is normally located in /home/cspace/collectionspace-source or /opt/collectionspace.

If you created a tenant on your system using the clone-tenant tool, you will have edited the tenant.properties files in the services and application source code directories. These changes will prevent some the next steps form working. Usually, there's no need to retain the changed tenant.properties files after the tenant has been created, so you can remove your changes:

cd /home/cspace/collectionspace-source # or cd /opt/collectionspace cd services git checkout tenant.properties cd ../application git checkout tenant.properties

Upgrade the source code to 7.0:

cd /home/cspace/collectionspace-source # or cd /opt/collectionspace cd services git fetch git checkout v7.0-branch cd ../application git fetch git checkout v7.0-branch

Upgrade Tenant Back End (Services) Configuration

If you created a tenant in 6.1, there will be some back end configuration for the tenant in the application source code directory, in the directory named tomcat-main/src/main/resources/tenants/{tenant_short_name}, where {tenant_short_name} is the short name of your tenant. There will also be a directory containing configuration for the tenant that you used as a template to create your tenant, at tomcat-main/src/main/resources/tenants/{template_short_name}. Copy all of the files from the template tenant directory to your tenant directory, except for settings.xml. When copying, replace the template tenant's short name with your tenant's short name in each file name. For example, if your tenant's short name is mytenant, and it was created from the anthro tenant:

cd /home/cspace/collectionspace-source # or cd /opt/collectionspace cd application/tomcat-main/src/main/resources/tenants ls anthro > anthro-authority-concept.xml anthro-collectionobject.xml settings.xml > anthro-authority-person-termList.xml domain-instance-vocabularies.xml cp anthro/anthro-authority-concept.xml mytenant/mytenant-authority-concept.xml cp anthro/anthro-authority-person-termList.xml mytenant/mytenant-authority-person-termList.xml cp anthro/anthro-collectionobject.xml mytenant/mytenant-collectionobject.xml cp anthro/domain-instance-vocabularies.xml mytenant/domain-instance-vocabularies.xml

There is additional configuration for your tenant in the file tomcat-main/src/main/resources/{tenant_short_name}-tenant.xml. This file was based on the corresponding file for the tenant you used as a template. That file is named tomcat-main/src/main/resources/{template_short_name}-tenant.xml. You will need to check if the configuration for the template tenant has changed between 6.1 and 7.0. If so, make the same changes to your tenant's configuration file. For example, if your tenant is based on the anthro tenant, use git to check for changes to tomcat-main/src/main/resources/anthro-tenant.xml:

This shows that three changes were made to the configuration for the template tenant (in this example, the anthro tenant) from 6.1 to 7.0: One include line was changed, and two were added. Make the same changes to the configuration file for your tenant (tomcat-main/src/main/resources/{tenant_short_name}-tenant.xml). Note that the results will vary, depending on the template tenant. Some tenants may require no configuration changes.

If you created more than one tenant, repeat the above steps for each tenant.

Upgrade Tenant Front End (UI) Configuration

If you created a tenant in 6.1, the user interface for the tenant will be located in the services/cspace-ui directory. Inside that directory, there will be a directory named with the short name of your tenant.

To upgrade your tenant, copy build.properties from the tenant that you used as a template for creating your tenant. For example, if the short name of your tenant is mytenant tenant, and your tenant was cloned from the anthro tenant:

If you created more than one tenant, repeat for each tenant.

Build and Deploy

Build and deploy CollectionSpace from the source code. The final ant command below includes the create_db target. This will not delete any existing data, because the -Drecreate_db=true parameter is not supplied.

Verify the Upgrade

Start CollectionSpace. Ensure that there are no errors in the logs during startup, and that you can log in to your tenant, and open and save records.