🔄 Nextcloud Updater

🔄 The built-in Updater keeps your Nextcloud Server installation up-to-date. In many cases it can be used in place of the manual update process.

Background

• How to upgrade in the Maintenance chapter of the Nextcloud Administration Manual
• What does the updater do?

Note

The built-in Updater is primarily applicable to manual/Archive (aka: "tarball") installations. Most other installation methods (such as Docker images and Snaps) utilize their own officially supported processes for keeping Nextcloud Server up-to-date. Please follow their respective documented approaches rather than trying to run the Updater yourself.

Configuration

No special configuration parameters are generally required for the Updater. There are some optional parameters which may be of interest in some environments:

• updatedirectory
• update.disable-web
• update.cli-upgrade-link

Usage

The built-in Updater can be used in two ways: via the Web UI and via the command-line. The former is more convenient, but the latter is more reliable.

Warning

Please make a backup and familiarize yourself with the restore process before proceeding with using the Updater.

Web

Go to Administration settings. It's in the Overview (under the Update heading). If the updatenotifications app is enabled you will also receive notifications when new versions of Server are published.

See Using the web based updater in the Nextcloud Administration Manual.

Command-line

See Using the command line based updater

updater.phar

Parameters:

--no-backup              Don't create a backup of the application code (note: the Updater's backup *never* backs up data or databases contents)
--no-upgrade             Don't automatically run `occ upgrade` when the Updater finishes (note: `occ upgrade` is required after Updater updates the application code in order to push out any database changes in the newly deployed version of Nextcloud)

Troubleshooting

Logging

• The Updater operates independently from Server so it has it's own log file called updater.log which is located in the configured datadirectory for the instance.

Unable to use the built-in Updater

If the built-in Updater does not function reliably for your environment, the old reliable (albeit admittedly tedious) manual update process may be your best alternative. This was the primary way of keeping Nextcloud Server up-to-date before the automated Updater was developed. In addition, if Updater does not work in your environment, report the details of your situation to https://github.com/nextcloud/updater/issues so that consideration can be given to adapting Updater to a wider variety of environments.

Updater != occ upgrade

The occ upgrade command runs the database migrations which adapt your existing database to the updated version Nextcloud Server that is deployed by the Updater (or via a manual update).

Despite the confusing naming - which makes sense technically, but in hindsight may not have been the best to avoid confusion - the Updater must run (and completely successfully) before occ upgrade will have anything to do.

Getting Help

https://help.nextcloud.com

Suggesting enhancement ideas or reporting possible bugs:

https://github.com/nextcloud/updater/issues

Tip

Since bug reports are not for technical support, you may not receive a personalized or timely response. If you suspect you may have encountered a previously unknown bug, please try to troubleshoot it in the Help Forum first.

Contributing

If you have found a possible solution to a reported bug or an enhancement idea, please submit a PR.