Sympa upgrade is a relatively riskless operations, mainly because the install process preserves your customizations (templates, configuration, authorization scenarios,...) and also because Sympa automates a few things (DB update, CPAN modules installation).
New features, changes and bug fixes are summarized in the NEWS file, part of the tar.gz (the Changelog file is a complete log file of CVS changes). As mentionned at the beginning of this file, uncompatible changes are preceded by '*****'. While running the make install Sympa will detect the previously installed version and will prompt you with uncompatible changes between both versions of the software. You can interrupt the install process at that stage if you are too frightened. Output of the make install :
You are upgrading from Sympa 4.2 You should read CAREFULLY the changes listed below ; they might be uncompatible changes : <RETURN> ***** require new perlmodule XML-LibXML ***** You should update your DB structure (automatically performed by Sympa with MySQL), adding the following table (mySQL example) : ***** CREATE TABLE admin_table ( ***** list_admin varchar(50) NOT NULL, ***** user_admin varchar(100) NOT NULL, ***** role_admin enum('listmaster','owner','editor') NOT NULL, ***** date_admin datetime NOT NULL, ***** update_admin datetime, ***** reception_admin varchar(20), ***** comment_admin varchar(150), ***** subscribed_admin enum('0','1'), ***** included_admin enum('0','1'), ***** include_sources_admin varchar(50), ***** info_admin varchar(150), ***** profile_admin enum('privileged','normal'), ***** PRIMARY KEY (list_admin, user_admin,role_admin), ***** INDEX (list_admin, user_admin,role_admin) ***** ); ***** Extend the generic_sso feature ; Sympa is now able to retrieve the user email address in a LDAP directory <RETURN>
Required and optional perl modules (CPAN) installation is automatically handled at the make time. You are asked before each module is installed. For optional modules, associated features are listed.
Checking for REQUIRED modules: ------------------------------------------ perl module from CPAN STATUS ----------- --------- ------ Archive::Zip Archive-Zip OK (1.09 >= 1.05) CGI CGI OK (2.89 >= 2.52) DB_File DB_FILE OK (1.806 >= 1.75) Digest::MD5 Digest-MD5 OK (2.20 >= 2.00) FCGI FCGI OK (0.67 >= 0.67) File::Spec File-Spec OK (0.83 >= 0.8) IO::Scalar IO-stringy OK (2.104 >= 1.0) LWP libwww-perl OK (5.65 >= 1.0) Locale::TextDomain libintl-perl OK (1.10 >= 1.0) MHonArc::UTF8 MHonArc version is too old ( < 2.4.6). >>>>>>> You must update "MHonArc" to version "" <<<<<<. Setting FTP Passive mode Description: Install module MHonArc::UTF8 ? n MIME::Base64 MIME-Base64 OK (3.05 >= 3.03) MIME::Tools MIME-tools OK (5.411 >= 5.209) Mail::Internet MailTools OK (1.60 >= 1.51) Regexp::Common Regexp-Common OK (2.113 >= 1.0) Template Template-ToolkitOK (2.13 >= 1.0) XML::LibXML XML-LibXML OK (1.58 >= 1.0) Checking for OPTIONAL modules: ------------------------------------------ perl module from CPAN STATUS ----------- --------- ------ Bundle::LWP LWP OK (1.09 >= 1.09) Constant subroutine CGI::XHTML_DTD redefined at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/constant.pm line 108, <STDIN> line 1. CGI::Fast CGI CGI::Fast doesn't return 1 (check it). Crypt::CipherSaber CipherSaber OK (0.61 >= 0.50) DBD::Oracle DBD-Oracle was not found on this system. Description: Oracle database driver, required if you connect to a Oracle database. Install module DBD::Oracle ?
Whatever RDBMS you are using (mysql, Pg, Sybase or Oracle) Sympa will check every database tables and fields. If one is missing sympa.pl will not start. If you are using mysql Sympa will also check field types and will try to change them (or create them) automatically ; assuming that the DB user configured has sufficient privileges. If You are not using Mysql or if the DB user configured in sympa.conf does have sufficient privileges, then you should change the database structure yourself, as mentionned in the NEWS file.
Output of Sympa logs :
Table admin_table created in database sympa Field 'comment_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field comment_admin added to table admin_table Field 'date_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field date_admin added to table admin_table Field 'include_sources_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field include_sources_admin added to table admin_table Field 'included_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field included_admin added to table admin_table Field 'info_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field info_admin added to table admin_table Field 'list_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field list_admin added to table admin_table Field 'profile_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field profile_admin added to table admin_table Field 'reception_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field reception_admin added to table admin_table Field 'role_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field role_admin added to table admin_table Field 'subscribed_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field subscribed_admin added to table admin_table Field 'update_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Field update_admin added to table admin_table Field 'user_admin' (table 'admin_table' ; database 'sympa') was NOT found. Attempting to add it... Setting list_admin,user_admin,role_admin fields as PRIMARY Field user_admin added to table admin_table
Sympa comes with default configuration files (templates, scenarios,...) that will be installed in the /home/sympa/bin directory. If you need to customize some of them, you should copy the file first in a safe place, ie in the /home/sympa/etc directory. If you do so, the Sympa upgrade process will preserve your site customizations.
This can be very convenient to have a stable version of Sympa and a fresh version for test purpose, both running on the same server.
Both sympa instances must be completely partitioned, unless you want the make production mailing lists visible through the test service.
The biggest part of the partitioning is achieved while running the ./configure. Here is a sample call to ./configure on the test server side :
./configure --prefix=/home/sympa-dev \ --with-confdir=/home/sympa-dev/etc \ --with-mandir=/home/sympa-dev/man \ --with-initdir=/home/sympa-dev/init \ --with-piddir=/home/sympa-dev/pid --with-lockdir=/home/sympa-dev/lock \ --with-sendmail_aliases=/home/sympa-dev/etc/sympa_aliases
You can also customize more parameters via the /home/sympa-dev/etc/sympa.conf file.
If you wish to share the same lists in both Sympa instances, then some parameters should have the same value : home, db_name, arc_path