Patching Liferay DXP

This document has been updated and ported to Liferay Learn and is no longer maintained here.

While we strive for perfection with every Liferay DXP release, the reality of the human condition dictates that releases may not be as perfect as originally intended. But we’ve planned for that. Included with every Liferay DXP bundle is a Patching Tool that handles installing two types of patches: fix packs and hotfixes.

Important: Make sure to back up your Liferay DXP installation and database regularly, especially before patching. The patching tool installs code changes and some of these make data changes (if necessary) automatically on startup.

Certain fix packs (service packs) can include data/schema micro changes—they’re optional and revertible. Module upgrades and any micro changes they include are applied at server startup by default, or can be applied manually by disabling the autoUpgrade property. Server startup skips all Core micro changes. Instead, you can apply them using the upgrade tool before server startup.

Important: Installing the latest service pack on top of Liferay DXP 7.2 GA1/FP1 requires running the data upgrade tool. Examine the Liferay DXP upgrade instructions to determine preparations, testing, and post upgrade steps that are appropriate for you. To eliminate system down time during upgrade, consider using the Blue-green deployment technique.

Liferay DXP 7.2 FP2/SP1’s data schema change adds version columns to several tables. Hibernate’s optimistic locking system uses the columns to preserve data integrity during concurrent data modifications.

Note: Patching a cluster requires additional considerations.