Upon an upgrade that involved going from a 3.x version (migrating to custom fields and blog roller to link roller) to 4.25, the following happened:
Everything went pretty smoothly for several days, then seemingly out of the blue another 'you need to upgrade the database' screen appeared. I backed up the database before allowing MT to do this. And then let it do the upgrade. I saved the list of tables upgraded (starting with "Upgrading database from version 3.2."...) I had my fingers crossed that something had triggered the upgrade and it see each table was already upgraded. The speed at which it upgraded seemed to indicate that happened.
Initial questions:
-Is there some kind of mysql database maintenance I should do that may have triggered this?
-In which database table does MT look for instructions to upgrade?
-If I get the upgrade message again and want to avoid letting it upgrade, what's the best way to do that (either by jiggering the database or MT)?
After I 'upgraded' -
When I logged back in everything seemed normal. With the exception of templates. In the process of upgrading a few days earlier I had put a whole set of new template files and linked to those files. After the second 'upgrade' those templates seemed to revert to the older versions. This would lead me to think somehow the database was reverted or restored from a backup, because that data was overwritten with the new templates. Other data such as entries, comments that had changed since the first upgrade were not affected (thankfully). Or that in the first upgrade porting the templates to the new format didn't work (I know little about how MT works with the database, so I'm pulling ideas out of you know here).
Between the two upgrades, I did notice some strange behavior with editing templates in the interface, saving and those changes not being saved. I assume this is some issue with the linked files and perhaps their permissions.
I realize it's possible nobody has this exact behavior before, but any advice is greatly appreciated!
Reported on Movable Type 4.2
I see there are some related threads in "general" (sorry for posting in the wrong forum)
http://forums.movabletype.org/2008/10/sudden-time-to-upgrade-syndrome----but-i-havent-changed-anything.html
http://forums.movabletype.org/2009/02/have-you-lost-templateswidgets-during-an-upgrade.html
'Normally' this is called by a problem with the Schema version in the MT database.
See http://forums.sixapart.com/index.php?showtopic=63552 on the old forums for some possible solutions / things to check.
Thanks Rob!
Just an update for anyone searching on this topic - the site afflicted with this issue still has it about 1x a week. Per the link Rob linked to I added the database schema to the config file, in this case the line: SchemaVersion 4.0070
Subsequent "time to upgrades" have not involved the database, just plugins. So it's one of the following:
Plugin 'Professional Pack' installed successfully.
Plugin 'Community Pack' installed successfully.
Plugin 'Motion' installed successfully.
Plugin 'Action Streams' installed successfully.
Plugin 'Link Roller' upgraded successfully to version 2.6b1 (schema version 2.3001).
I had set community, motion and action to "disable" since this site was not using those, after the upgrade they were reinstalled. I am using professional and link roller.
Any updates on this Wayne or others?
I have had this problem persistently for months. Curiously, while others have reported template outages when the site upgrades, I instead experience these two issues:
1) The system "forgets" my system email address, which means that if I forget to re-enter it after I pseudo-upgrade, new registration emails fail to send, thus preventing users from registering
2) The system "forgets" my registration settings for my blog, and users are no longer able to log-in unless I re-enter those settings (e.g. Typepad, Yahoo, Facebook, etc).
I was hoping upgrading to the latest build (4.261) would remedy this issue -- but no change. Same result.
Any help would be VERY much appreciated!
Trevor
These are further symptoms of the false upgrade bug. It's supposed to be fixed finally in 4.3.
Adding the schema to the config file was pretty key in reducing the trouble this problem causes - in my case it was rolling back to previous version templates which was breaking the entire site. Now when it does show up it's a very quick upgrade screen (not upgrading 4,000 comments) and no changes happen to the system itself. I don't know if adding the schema has reduced the frequency, but it has been reduced to perhaps 1-2x a month vs. 1x a week.
Perhaps the 'forgetting' you detail is similar to my situation with the templates - it's rolling back to the previous database's records of these fields and removing what you have added in the 4.25 version.
Hopefully upgrading to 4.31 will fix it !!
The problem has been solved since v4.30!
I have upgraded the installation in this thread to 4.32 - just a note on how that went for anyone following this upgrade path in the future.
I removed the line in mt-config.cgi with schema version before upgrading (knowing that the new version would have a different schema version and I would want the db to be upgraded).
The upgrade did /revert and write/ over all my template files to the versions I had back in mt 3.x. If you are reading this and considering upgrading, you should back up all your templates and template files (in this case all the template files were linked but even the linked files were overwritten) before upgrading, or you will face sadness.
I'm assuming since I've read in several places that this bug has been fixed in 4.3x, but wondering if I should see it and want to add back the schema version, what is the schema version for 4.32?