was just wondering if anybody had upgraded from 5.7 to 6.5.2 and could give an idea of how painful the process was.
i am just trying this in a test environment before we decide whether or not to do it and appear to have fallen at the first hurdle. The instructions say to remove all unused apps including fast forward ones. I stopped a few fast forward apps and my previews stopped working in that the top nav wasn’t showing. So i turned the apps back on and restarted the server and still no top nav. I’m feeling this doesn’t bode well…
The process wasn’t too bad (although we did have a Percussion partner involved). As regards FF content types, we didn’t use any so getting rid of them wasn’t an issue…and rather than just switching them off it was a case of just getting rid as recommended (and in addition removing the underlying db tables / child tables and relationships). What do the console log errors look like when this happened and which apps did you switch off?
The alternative is sticking with an unsupported version of RX (meaning no patches etc) and the associated problems such as the JRE on clients not working beyond a certain version. Having said that I cannot say there is much benefit to the user from the upgrade (aside from a login / out button) yet as we haven’t migrated to velocity templates. Publishing still takes forever…and Editlive has its issues. I would say 6.5.2 is more stable than 5.7…we used to run into out of memory errors quite frequently, but this version doesn’t give us any problems and has been very reliable.
its comforting to know that we are not the only ones experiencing such problems. Our server gets a java heap space out of memory error every time we do a full publish and as you say this takes forever. I’m finding 5.7 a nightmare to try to develop in at the moment - weird stuff keeps happening and then the next day it will have just gone away. I think it is becoming completely unusable so for us its a case of upgrade or get something new. I’m going to test the upgrade and i think our management will make a decision based on that.
its interesting that you haven’t found any user benefits. I am going to do the velocity templates at the same time as the upgrade. do you not use active assembly as i understand that the velocity templates are needed for this.
going back to the pre upgrade stuff, i didn’t get any errors in the console log when i stopped the applications. i switched off stuff like brief and calendar - content types that we had never used. Anyway, i got our server guys to reinstate the rx tree and db to before i turned off those applications and i started again. Turned off the exact same apps, and guess what - by the power of rhythmyx, this time no problems!!! its like magic, but not in a good way ;O)
I was peripherally involved in an upgrade from 5.7 to 6.5.2 about 3 years ago… I can say only that we’re only now finally getting around to finishing the switch from XSL to Velocity templates. I can say that 6.7’s publishing tabs are much easier to use and better organized than in 5.7 or 6.5, so if you have the opportunity, skip 6.5 altogether and drop right into the latest.
The PSO team I’m working with in an upgrade to 6.7 is very strongly suggesting to leave all the FF stuff in place. Percussion Support sometimes will want to use it as away to test built-in functionality if something isn’t working in your system.
The recommended upgrade path from 5.7 to 6.7 is as follows:
Clone your existing PROD 5.7 into a new TEST environment.
IMPORTANT: Make sure everything works as it did in PROD.
Run the upgrade to 5.7.1. This step could take several hours. Please be patient. If the upgrade fails for any reason, please open a new ticket with Technical Support.
Start the server with a clean console.log and record any errors or warnings. Fix anything that you know how to fix. If you cannot resolve an initialization error, please open a new ticket with Technical Support.
Run all applicable full publish editions and make sure all your content publishes successfully. Record any errors during publishing and fix any broken content. If you cannot resolve your publishing error(s), please open a new ticket with Technical Support.
Apply the latest patch (at the time of this post RX-14865 )
IMPORTANT: Now make a backup of your new 5.7.1 TEST environment. This is just in case the 6.5.2 upgrade fails.
Run the upgrade to 6.5.2. This step could take several hours. Please be patient. If the upgrade fails for any reason, please open a new ticket with Technical Support.
Once the upgrade is complete, repeat steps 3-4.
Apply the latest 6.5.2 patch (at the time of this post RX-16762)
IMPORTANT: Now make a backup of your newly upgrade 6.5.2 TEST environment. This is just in case the 6.7 upgrade fails.
Run the upgrade to 6.7. This step could take several hours. Please be patient. If the upgrade fails for any reason, please open a new ticket with Technical Support.
Once the upgrade is complete, repeat steps 3-4.
Apply the latest 6.7 patch (at the time of this post RX-16757)
NOTE: if you need help at any step along the way, please open a ticket with Technical Support.
Those are the high level steps to upgrade from 5.7 to 6.7. I hope that helps.
Best Regards,
Adam Scarcella*>>*Rhythmyx Software Support Engineer III (Tier 3)
Percussion Software, Inc.
600 Unicorn Park Drive, Woburn MA, 01801 http://support.percussion.com