Skip to main content

Updating Friendica

Using a Friendica archive

If you installed Friendica in the path/to/friendica folder:

  1. Unpack the new Friendica archive in path/to/friendica_new.
  2. Copy the following items from path/to/friendica to path/to/friendica_new:
    • config/local.config.php
    • proxy/
      The following items only need to be copied if they are located inside your friendica path:
    • your storage folder as set in Admin -> Site -> File Upload -> Storage base path
    • your item cache as set in Admin -> Site -> Performance -> Path to item cache
    • your temp folder as set in Admin -> Site -> Advanced -> Temp path
  3. Rename the path/to/friendica folder to path/to/friendica_old.
  4. Rename the path/to/friendica_new folder to path/to/friendica.
  5. Check your site. Note: it may go into maintenance mode to update the database schema.
  6. If everything works, just delete the path/to/friendica_old folder.

To update Addons from an archive, simply delete the path/to/friendica/addon and replace it with the provided archive.

Using Git

You can get the latest changes at any time with

cd path/to/friendica
git pull
bin/composer.phar install --no-dev

The addon tree has to be updated separately like so:

cd path/to/friendica/addon
git pull

For both repositories: The default branch to use is the stable branch, which is the stable version of Friendica. It is updated about four times a year on a fixed schedule.

If you want to use and test bleeding edge code please checkout the develop branch. The new features and fixes will be merged from develop into stable after a release candidate period before each release.

Warning: The develop branch is unstable, and breaks on average once a month for at most 24 hours until a patch is submitted and merged. Be sure to pull frequently if you choose the develop branch.

Considerations before upgrading Friendica

MySQL >= 5.7.4

Starting from MySQL version 5.7.4, the IGNORE keyword in ALTER TABLE statements is ignored. This prevents automatic table deduplication if a UNIQUE index is added to a Friendica table's structure. If a DB update fails for you while creating a UNIQUE index, make sure to manually deduplicate the table before trying the update again.

Manual deduplication

There are two main ways of doing it, either by manually removing the duplicates or by recreating the table. Manually removing the duplicates is usually faster if they're not too numerous. To manually remove the duplicates, you need to know the UNIQUE index columns available in database.sql.

SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(id), <index columns>, count(*) as count FROM users
GROUP BY <index columns> HAVING count >= 2;

/* delete or merge duplicate from above query */;

If there are too many rows to handle manually, you can create a new table with the same structure as the table with duplicates and insert the existing content with INSERT IGNORE. To recreate the table you need to know the table structure available in database.sql.

CREATE TABLE <table_name>_new <rest of the CREATE TABLE>;
INSERT IGNORE INTO <table_name>_new SELECT * FROM <table_name>;
DROP TABLE <table_name>;
RENAME TABLE <table_name>_new TO <table_name>;

This method is slower overall, but it is better suited for large numbers of duplicates.

Resolving Possible Database Issues Post Upgrading

Foreign Keys

Some of the updates include the use of foreign keys now that will bump into issues with previous versions, which would sometimes shove bad data into tables, preventing, causing errors such as below.

Error 1452 occurred during database update:
Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`friendica`.`#sql-10ea6_5a6d`, CONSTRAINT `#sql-10ea6_5a6d_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`contact-id`) REFERENCES `contact` (`id`))
ALTER TABLE `thread` ADD FOREIGN KEY (`iid`) REFERENCES `item` (`id`) ON UPDATE RESTRICT ON DELETE CASCADE;

All current known fixes for possible items that can go wrong are as below.

DELETE FROM `item` WHERE `owner-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `contact`);
DELETE FROM `item` WHERE `contact-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `contact`);
DELETE FROM `notify` WHERE `uri-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `item-uri`);
DELETE FROM `photo` WHERE `contact-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `contact`);
DELETE FROM `thread` WHERE `iid` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `item`);
DELETE FROM `item` WHERE `author-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `contact`);
DELETE FROM `diaspora-interaction` WHERE `uri-id` NOT IN (SELECT `id` FROM `item-uri`);

This all has been compiled as of currently from issue #9746, #9753, and #9878.

⇧