Joomla Update Problems - Documentation

[ceford]

The following document is fairly new and little known:

https://docs.joomla.org/J4.x:Joomla_Update_Problems

There is an obscure link to it in a Joomla Update error layout (link currently broken but being fixed). It should be of interest to those of us who try to help others diagnose and fix problems. I learned a few things from it. It seems most relevant to anyone updating within the 4.x series rather than migrating from 3.x to 4.x, but useful for anyone moving to 4.x. Hence posting here rather than the Migrating or General forums.

[sozzled]

Nice, @ceford. I particularly like the advice about checking that the Update Sites list hasn't been corrupted: this accounts for most of those "but I have the latest version of J! installed (when they don't)" questions/problems.

The J! 4.x update beast is more demanding than updating previous versions of J!. I would recommend changing the PHP quotas (even though the ones suggested in the page we're discussing may work) to something more realistic. I've found, through trial and error, websites hosted commercially often outperform websites hosted locally (i.e. on an xAMP stack on one's PC). That's why I've recommended in the past, and I will continue to recommend, adapting the PHP quotas to the environment, like so:



These settings should give trouble-free experience.

There's no good reason to be a miser in setting PHP quotas but there's not benefit in setting ridiculous values either. Max. Execution Time should not be set higher than 120 and, under no circumstances, should it be set "unlimited" (i.e. = -1) because the update procedure will fail.

There are other considerations, too, such as ensuring that allow_fopen_url() is enabled and ensuring curl support is also enabled (otherwise "live updates" won't work). It may also be worthwhile including advice about leaving $live_site as an empty string, perhaps.

In conclusion, this technical document is a good start.