Plesk 12.5 Linux Upgrade

When upgrading to Plesk 12.5 you should find this a relatively simple task if you have not let yourself get to far out of date.

Before starting the upgrade you should always ensure that you have installed all OS update and any updates that are available for the Plesk panel for the version you are currently on, and make sure that the server you are upgrading meets the minimum requirements for the version you are upgrading to,

One thing that I always check before I start an upgrade is the version files for Plesk /usr/local/psa/version and /usr/local/psa/core.version if they do not show the correct version numbers for the current version of Plesk then you will have problems with the upgrade and may indicate a failed upgrade in the past where not all problems had been resolved, or was simply bodged….. if you do find this then you should fix this before starting any upgrade, although the pre upgrade check should pick this up. I am not going to go into resolving lots of issues here as this will make this a very big read and the Plesk documentation and forums is very good for finding solutions.

When upgrading you will also need to consider how you will upgrade in place or by migration/transfer.
If you are using any version prior to 10.4.4 then you will need to upgrade by transfer, although it is possible to upgrade to 10.4.4 then to 12.5 I prefer to upgrade by transfer in these cases as the OS is probably also out of date, you will also need to make sure that you are using an OS that is supported by the new version of the Plesk panel, Plesk 12.5 supports CentOS 5+ and Debian ?+, for other operating systems check the Plesk documentation.

Linux Requirements:

• 10% free disk space
• 3GB free space in /tmp temp
• /tmp needs to be able execute files

Yum: You will need to be able to get updates via yum and ensure that you have base and updates repos enabled.

APT: You will need to be able to get updates via apt check your sources.list file it should look something like the below for Debian 8

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie main

Once you have completed all your checks it’s time to start the upgrade process.

Start Plesk Upgrade

To start the upgrade you can do this from the Plesk panel by going to the Tools & Settings then Updates and Upgrades this will load the updates page or from the command line and running the auto installer script, I prefer to do this from the command line.

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/autoinstaller

Once you have started the command line install this will give you some prompts for which most will be yes, the first prompt that you need to pay attention to is the version selection, here you will need to select the version you want to upgrade to, at this point you will see there is Plesk 12.5xx stable or Plesk Onyx, from experience I would always advise not jumping major versions as this tends to leave things a little broken and there are normally a lot of changes, I always advise that this is done as an incremental upgrade e.g. 10 to 11 then 11 to 12 etc… this will also alow you to check on the upgrade and make sure that it’s still working and make adjustments for any changes that may be required.

After you have selected the version you are upgrading the installer will start to download the update files and start the upgrade process, there will be a few more prompts that require action to proceed namely the disk space requirements and additional packages so keep an eye on it.

While the upgrade is running you can view details within the Plesk logs folder /var/log/plesk/install/
You can also view real time progress with something like the below, note the log file may be different if you are upgrading to a different version of Plesk.

tail -f /var/log/plesk/install/plesk_12.5.30_installation.log

In Cases of a failed upgrade:

If you receive error during the upgrade then you can check the logs in /tmp/autoinstaller3.log I always say check the logs for any errors with an upgrade as this normally gives you a good indication of what the problem is.

If you have a failed upgrade and the installer stops then you will need to check the logs folder for the error, if you are not sure on how to resolve this then try looking at the Plesk KB (this is very good most answers can be found there).

When you have fixed all errors then you need to run the bootstrapper for the version you are upgrading to, in this case 12.5 /use/local/psa/bootstrapper/pp12.5.30-bootstrapper/bootstrapper.sh rerun

once this has completed you now need to rerun the upgrade.