Moving an eZ publish local installation to a hosting server

Author Message

Salvatore De Fazio

Wednesday 17 October 2007 9:12:22 am

I have a functional installation of eZ 3.8.4 running on a linux hosting server.
I would upgrade it to 3.10.0, but I want to achieve this smoothly, whitout problems on my on-line site.
I thought in this way:
- I copy the on-line database to a local mysql database;
- I copy the on-line directory structure to my local workstation;
- I set the local installation to find my local database (but I don't know how to do this);
- I upgrade my installation from 3.8.x to 3.9.x and from 3.9.x to 3.10;
- I move my local installation to the hosting server.
Is it possible? How can I do without upgrading directly the on-line installation?
(I think that I don't run the upgrade scripts directly on the hosting server...)
Thanks.

Piotrek Karaś

Wednesday 17 October 2007 9:54:27 am

I guess that would be one of the reasonable upgrade paths. I anticipate some problems, though. Your local server may be significantly different to the online hosting solution that you use, which means you may want to setup an identical/similar server for upgrade purposes, or - if you have enough expertise - rely on compatibility. Either way, I believe that you will have adjust more than just database connection details, for example siteaccess basics, addressing mode etc. I'm not sure that is required for running all the upgrades, but definitely you will want to test your upgraded installation locally before pushing it online.

--
Company: mediaSELF Sp. z o.o., http://www.mediaself.pl
eZ references: http://ez.no/partners/worldwide_partners/mediaself
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Salvatore De Fazio

Sunday 21 October 2007 7:20:10 am

Thank you Piotrek.
I tried the first three steps I indicated in my previous post.
I copied my on-line 3.8.4 installation (db + directory structure) on my local wokstation
(php 4.4.4, mysql 5.0.33) and I changed the siteaccesses and global settings to match my
local environment.
It's all ok, the site is visible and all content is in place, but I don't see the images that comes with all the content objects that belongs to a custom content class containing an image attribute.
The images are stored (either in the on-line and local site) in /var/plain_site/storage directory, but the images are visible only on the live site.
The img tag in the code of the pages (in the live site) has an src attribute containing the path to the image file like this: "/var/plain_site/storage/....".
In the pages of my local site the src attribute is this: "/name_of_the_root_folder_of_the_site/".
What's happened?
Thanks.

Piotrek Karaś

Sunday 21 October 2007 9:23:08 am

Hmmm...

1) It may be file read/write rights related, especially when you move a shared hosting all-privilege-root-like installation to a linux server - make sure the server can read/write to files in all necessary locations. If you don't know which those are, try a parallel fresh installation - the setup wizard will give you a hint on that subject.

2) Something like that could theoretically happen if the addressing method (url/host/port) and/or installation paths get messed up (since eZ Publish uses mostly absolute resource addressing) and/or cached. Clean all the cache.
But I'm actually guessing from other experiences - nothing like that has ever happened to me with eZ.

3) Always check what the debugger says - it should provide helpful details on such problems.

Nothing else comes to my mind at this point.

--
Company: mediaSELF Sp. z o.o., http://www.mediaself.pl
eZ references: http://ez.no/partners/worldwide_partners/mediaself
eZ certified developer: http://ez.no/certification/verify/272585
eZ blog: http://ez.ryba.eu

Salvatore De Fazio

Monday 22 October 2007 9:26:32 am

The files permissions are all ok, while the debug output puts in evidence some problems about image conversion with the executable of ImageMagick in /usr/bin, simply because the ImageMagick tool is not installed on my local php environment.. :-)
I changed the tool for image conversion in image.ini (Imagemagick IsEnabled False; GD IsEnabled True) and now all images are visible, even though at a lower quality.
Now I try to upgrade the distribution to 3.10.0 version..
Bye!

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