Preparing for an upgrade

Before you start the upgrade, prepare your OpenX environment:

Backup your system

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

Prepare the database

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 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 the newfiles suffix 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.
   

   The Configuration file locator 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: 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.
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 var directory, such as directoryname/var/NOBACKUPS.
6. Add the _backup suffix 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 OpenX:

Configuration file locator

Next step: Upgrade wizard

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.