Preparing a New Liferay DXP Server for Data Upgrade

This document has been updated and ported to Liferay Learn and is no longer maintained here.

To upgrade your Liferay DXP database, prepare a new server for hosting Liferay DXP 7.2. You’ll use this server to run the database upgrade and run Liferay DXP 7.2. Then you can run your production server while you’re configuring a new server to host Liferay DXP 7.2 exactly the way you want.

Note: these steps can be done in parallel with any of the upgrade preparation steps: planning for deprecated apps, testing upgrades on a Liferay DXP backup copy, or preparing to upgrade the Liferay DXP database.

Get the latest fixes for Liferay DXP 7.2 by requesting an upgrade patch.

Request an Upgrade Patch from Liferay Support (Liferay DXP only)

An upgrade patch contains the latest fix pack and hot fixes planned for the next service pack. Upgrade patches provide the latest fixes available for your data upgrade.

Install Liferay

Install Liferay DXP on your application server or use Liferay DXP bundled with your application server of choice.

Important: Do not start your application server. It’s not ready to start until after the Liferay DXP database upgrade.

Install the Latest Upgrade Patch or Fix Pack (Liferay DXP only)

Install the upgrade patch (if you requested it from Liferay Support) or the latest Fix Pack.

Migrate Your OSGi Configurations (7.0+)

Copy your OSGi configuration files (i.e., .config files) to your new server’s [Liferay Home]/osgi/configs folder.

Migrate Your Portal Properties

It is likely that you have overridden portal properties to customize your installation. If so, you must update the properties files (e.g., portal-setup-wizard.properties and portal-ext.properties) to Liferay DXP 7.2. For features that use OSGi Config Admin, you must convert your properties to OSGi configurations. As you do this, you must account for property changes in all versions of Liferay DXP since your current version up to and including Liferay DXP 7.2. Start with updating your portal properties.

Update Your Portal Properties

If you’re coming from a version prior to Liferay Portal 6.2, start with these property-related updates:

• If you’re on Liferay Portal 6.1, adapt your properties to the new defaults that Liferay Portal 6.2 introduced.

• If you’re on Liferay 6.0.12, migrate the Image Gallery.

• If you have a sharded environment, configure your upgrade to generate a non-sharded environment.

• Liferay’s image sprite framework is deprecated as of 7.2 and is disabled by default. The framework requires scanning plugins for image sprites. If you don’t use the framework, there’s no need for it to scan for images sprites. If you use the framework, enable it by overriding the default sprite.enabled portal property (new in 7.2) value with the following setting in a portal-ext.properties file:

  sprite.enabled=true
  

Note: You can build image sprites using any framework you like and deploy them in your plugins.

When a new version of Liferay DXP is released, there are often changes to default settings, and this release is no different. If you rely on the defaults from your old version, you should review the changes and decide to keep the defaults from your old version or accept the defaults of the new.

Because no existing properties changed from 7.1 to 7.2, here’s a list of the 6.2 properties that have changed in 7.2:

users.image.check.token=false
organizations.types=regular-organization,location
organizations.rootable[regular-organization]=true
organizations.children.types[regular-organization]=regular-organization,location
organizations.country.enabled[regular-organization]=false
organizations.country.required[regular-organization]=false
organizations.rootable[location]=false
organizations.country.enabled[location]=true
organizations.country.required[location]=true
layout.set.prototype.propagate.logo=true
editor.wysiwyg.portal-web.docroot.html.taglib.ui.discussion.jsp=simple
web.server.servlet.check.image.gallery=true
blogs.trackback.enabled=true
discussion.comments.format=bbcode
discussion.max.comments=0
dl.file.entry.thumbnail.max.height=128
dl.file.entry.thumbnail.max.width=128

This property was removed:

organizations.children.types[location]

The latest portal properties reference provides property details and examples. Some properties are replaced by OSGi configurations.

Convert Applicable Properties to OSGi Configurations

Properties in modularized features have changed and must now be deployed separately in OSGi configuration files (OSGi Config Admin).

Use the blade upgradeProps command to scan your portal-ext.properties file to discover which properties are now set via OSGi Config Admin. You can also check the upgrade log from previous attempts for traces like these:

2019-03-09 17:05:17.678 ERROR [main][VerifyProperties:161] Portal property "layout.first.pageable[link_to_layout]" is obsolete
2019-03-09 17:05:17.679 ERROR [main][VerifyProperties:136] Portal property "journal.article.check.interval" was modularized to com.liferay.journal.web as "check.interval"

Tip: The Control Panel’s Configuration → System Settings screens are the most accurate way to create .config files. Use them to export a screen’s configuration to a .config file.

Update Your Database Driver

Install the recommended database driver and update your database connection driver specified in your portal-ext.properties. See the Database Templates.

Configure Your Documents and Media File Store

General document store configuration (e.g., dl.store.impl=[File Store Impl Class]) continues to be done using portal-ext.properties. But here’s what’s changed for document storage:

• Store implementation class package names changed from com.liferay.portlet.documentlibrary.store.* in Liferay Portal 6.2 to com.liferay.portal.store.* in Liferay DXP 7.0+. Make sure your portal-ext.properties file sets dl.store.impl in one of these ways:

  dl.store.impl=com.liferay.portal.store.file.system.FileSystemStore
  dl.store.impl=com.liferay.portal.store.db.DBStore
  dl.store.impl=com.liferay.portal.store.file.system.AdvancedFileSystemStore
  dl.store.impl=com.liferay.portal.store.s3.S3Store
  

• JCR Store was deprecated in Liferay DXP 7.0. The Document Repository Configuration documentation describes other store options. Migrate to a supported document store before upgrading your data.

• CMIS Store was deprecated since 7.0.10 Fix Pack 14 and was removed in Liferay DXP 7.2. The Document Repository Configuration documentation describes other store options. Migrate to a supported document store before upgrading your data.

• Since Liferay DXP 7.0, document store type-specific configuration (e.g., specific to Simple File Store, Advanced File Store, S3, etc.) is done in the Control Panel at Configuration → System Settings → File Storage or using OSGi configuration files (.config files). Type specific configuration is no longer done using portal-ext.properties.

For example, these steps to create a .config file specifying a root file location for a Simple File Store or Advanced File Store:

1. Create a .config file named after your store implementation class.

   Simple File Store: com.liferay.portal.store.file.system.configuration.FileSystemStoreConfiguration.config

   Advanced File Store: com.liferay.portal.store.file.system.configuration.AdvancedFileSystemStoreConfiguration.config

2. Set the following rootDir property and replace {document_library_path} with your file store’s path.

   rootDir="{document_library_path}"
   

3. Copy the .config file to your [Liferay Home]/osgi/configs folder.

The Document Repository Configuration provides more document store configuration details.

Configure Kerberos in place of NTLM

If you’re using NTLM to authenticate Microsoft Windows ™ accounts with Liferay DXP, switch to using Kerberos. Security vulnerabilities persist with NTLM. NTLM has been deprecated and removed from the bundle, but you can still build and deploy the module.

Disable Indexing

Before starting the upgrade process in your new installation, you must disable indexing to prevent upgrade process performance issues that arise when the indexer attempts to re-index content.

To disable indexing, create a file called com.liferay.portal.search.configuration.IndexStatusManagerConfiguration.config in your [Liferay Home]/osgi/configs folder and add the following content:

indexReadOnly="true"

After you complete the upgrade, re-enable indexing by removing the .config file or setting indexReadOnly="false".

Your new Liferay DXP 7.2 server is ready for upgrading your database.