Saying I’m as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs is an understatement! I think the last time I did a major upgrade it went pretty far south - so far so that I had to pay tech support to get me back up and running again.
My distro is pretty stock, I haven’t really done anything more than use supported modules and I’ve got a good backup of what I have in place on 13 right this moment.
Is there anything that you recommend I do prior to going down this path? Do I need to do anything with CentOS before starting this upgrade?
Fortunately this is my home PBX so if it goes bad then I can limp along until I get things totally reloaded from scratch, but this is my test bed for my system that’s hosted on FreePBXHosting to see if I’m going to have any issues before I tackle the primary production system.
One thing I’m concerned about is that my CentOS is 32-bit. I am reasonably certain that my processor is 64 bit compatible, when I query the cpuinfo I get an ‘lm’ in the flags and no i386/i486/i586/i686 and I believe that indicates that it’s a 64 bit processor (I got that from this url: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001121.htm)
Am I correct in assuming that this can be upgraded to 64 bit CentOS? I realize at this point I will need to do a full backup and totally reinstall 14 from scratch - is restoring the 13 backup possible once a new 14 is installed?
I believe that dtes64 in your cpuinfo file shows that your processor is 64 bit capable. Mine is in fact 64 bit and shows the same and I just moved to V14.
The one gotcha I read about, as I recall, is the need for a gigabit network card. And, it just seems to me that there is always some tweaking involved as something gets overlooked in the process.
Thank you for the input! Were you able to restore your 13 backups when you installed 14 or were you already 64 bit on 13 and were able to simply upgrade?
Trying to restore a 13 backup to 14 from all accounts and comments on the forum, as I recall, is not advised. Don’t do backup and restore between versions.
The absolute best way to move from 13 to 14 is the Home2FreePBX online conversion tool but that is primarily designed for new hardware OR use the module upgrade that should be available under your module admin in your 13 machine.
No matter what, there will be some tweaking and time involved in ensuring everything moved over.
Someone used one of the upgrade scripts to move from 32-bit to 64-bit (@JessicaRabbit perhaps) and had reasonably good success with that. I, in fact, have a 32-bit installation that needs to be upgraded as well, I just need to get on it. When I get that done, I’ll report back what happened…
I would think you would be best backing up then restoring from your 32bit version to a 64 bit version of the same freepbx version then running the upgrade on the 64 bit version. Trying to make sure not to restore 32 bit items.
That’s what I would try if I was you but maybe someone else has done this before.
That’s a great suggestion @adtopkek. I’m going to see what happens with the in-place 32-to-64 upgrade that @cynjut does to see what happens. I’m not in any rush to get this done immediately so I can be patient to see what the options may be.
Does anyone know if the RestAPI works on 14? it doesn’t seem to on 13.
Yes, indeed, I did use the 32bit -> 64bit -> 13 to 14 technique. All was well except my IVR settings, extension announcements and custom recordings were lost somewhere along the way, I am really unsure when. There was even a module upgrade for IVR following my upgrade.
I was pretty sure I did full backups for 32 to 64 including voicemail and audio but do check that you are truly doing a full backup.
*** Also, make DISK IMAGE backups at each step along the way or you could end up verrrry sorry. I actually use a bootable backup CD (Acronis) which provides good options where to direct the disk image backup files on my network or even onto a USB stick and will restore the full disk easily.
Good Luck.
@JessicaRabbit
I’m very interested in the script to go from 32 to 64. Did I understand correctly that you have such script? I’m currently in distro 13 32bit and would love to go to 13 64bit without the need to reinstall. Does this “supposed” script takes care of that?
It is not a script. You have to use the backup module to make a full backup stored on FTP or a USB drive.
Using the tool of your choice, save a full disk image of your disk just in case of disaster.
Do a fresh install of the v13 64bit distro. Looks like the v13 64bit distro is up to date when installed. When you have confirmed that it is installed and running, configure your Restore Module and restore your settings from where ever you saved them. Check your 64bit system very well to be sure all the settings are there.
Save another full disk image baskup so you can fall back to the v13 64bit if the move to v14 has any problems.
Now you have a 64bit system to move to v14 using the script. Fear not, the script takes a long time but will probably be successful.
Check out and update your new v14 and do another full disk backup if it looks and works ok.