I updated some modules on my site this weekend, mostly on my own because I'd taken notes the last time through. I had to ask for help a few times, and it seems like some steps change a bit from time to time, but if you are a novice on the command line sick of being totally dependent on a programmer friend or partner, see if this will work for you for updating your Drupal site:
Note: these instructions are for someone like me, who has down this a few times, but with someone holding her hand the whole time, but who does know how to wget and tar –zxvf, even if she messes up the order of the letters sometimes.
Go to http://example.com/admin/logs/updates to see what needs updating (substitute your site URL, k? e.g. http://jenna.openflows.com/admin/logs/updates). If it does, they'll be indicated in red. Though of course you have to have the module that sets your site to tell you to update your modules... Things that are to be commanded in italics:
- Log into SSH
- mkdir namedate
- cd namedate
- wget all updates
What I do is first copy all of the links into a Google document. Then I copy and paste them all again a line later and add {wget } (without the brackets) in front of each link. Remember to do a hard return after the last line. Then I paste them into SSH. wget URLS - tar -zxvf each update individually, just the file name, e.g. cck-5.x-1.9.tar.gz
Here I past all of the links in again, removing the part of the URL that I don't need and then pasting {tar –zxvf } in front of each one. Remember the hard return again. Paste 'em into SSH. tar –zxvf FILE NAMES - Back up the database
- cd /data/clients/jenna/ (or whatever your website root directory is)
- less sites/default/settings.php
- Then you have to hunt in the documentation (up and down arrow around for it) for your username and password. Mine looks like this: [myname:numbersandletter@webhost/nameVersion]. The username is whatever "myname" is, and the password is the "numbersandletters."
- q to get out of less.
- remove old back ups
- mysqldump -u username -p databasename > backupname e.g. jennabackupdate.sql
- enter password at prompt
- back up modules directory
- tar -cvf nameofoldbackup.tar /data/clients/jenna/sites/all/modules/*
- {ls /home/SITENAME}
- {rm -r sites/all/modules/NAMEOFMOD} (one at a time)
- {mv /home/SITENAME/BACKUPNAME/NAMEOFMOD sites/all/modules/tar}
- back on the old Internet, go to your updates page, e.g. http://jenna.openflows.com/admin/logs/updates.
- Click update.php
- Click update
- Check for red warning that you need to update things
- Repeat as necessary
- The end, but not for long...