How to Update to Variations 6.2 Client and Server

This page lists explains how to upgrade from 6.* to 6.2 for both the Variations server and client. If you have any questions about or problems with the update process, please contact Chris Colvard (812-856-0026, cjcolvar@indiana.edu).

Step 1. Upgrade the Variations Servers from 6.* to 6.2

Note: The upgrade process will stop your Variations server. You will also have to allow time for some hand-editing of configuration files to preserve your local customizations. And finally you will have to restart your Variations server applications.

Before starting the installation process, create the VARIATIONS_HOME environment variable and make sure it is set properly:

As root, create /etc/profile.d/variations.sh with this content:

export VARIATIONS_HOME=/home/dmlserv
export PATH=$VARIATIONS_HOME/app/bin:$PATH

Once VARIATIONS_HOME has been set (logout, log back in, and check with echo $VARIATIONS_HOME), run the following as root to let SELinux know the proper file contexts for Variations files. Whenever the system performs a relabeling SELinux will use these rules to set the contexts instead of using a default context which would make Variations be blocked by the SELinux policy. You can manually force a relabel using the restorecon command: restorecon -R -v ${VARIATIONS_HOME}

semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/content(/.*)?"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/Variations-[^/]*/conf(/.*)?"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/Variations-[^/]*/data(/.*)?"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/Variations-[^/]*/public_html(/.*)?"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_script_exec_t "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/Variations-[^/]*/public_html/cgi-bin(/.*)?"

Now log back in as dmlserv and check that your VARIATIONS_HOME matches your install location: echo $VARIATIONS_HOME

To install the server update, execute the following commands from your Variations install directory, /home/dmlserv.

1. Download the Variations_6.2_Server.tar.gz file to /home/dmlserv
2. First, untar the server update file: tar xvfz Variations_6.2_Server.tar.gz
3. Then create a symbolic link to the new application directory: ln -s Variations-6.2 app
4. Then change directories to the new application directory: cd app
5. Run the initVariations.sh script with the values used for existing install (See instructions here for more information)
6. Copy server configuration files:
   cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/conf/server/accessPolicy.xml /home/dmlserv/app/conf/server/
cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/conf/server/dmlscript.conf /home/dmlserv/app/conf/server/
cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/conf/server/dmlserver.xml /home/dmlserv/app/conf/server/
7. Update paths in configuration files to use new symlink:
   perl -pi -e 's@/home/dmlserv/Variations-[^/]*@/home/dmlserv/app@' /home/dmlserv/app/conf/server/*.*
8. Copy vocabularies to new server: cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/data/vocab/* /home/dmlserv/app/data/vocab/
9. Copy files used by statistics: cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/data/statistics/*.txt /home/dmlserv/app/data/statistics/
10. Copy or merge any other files manually edited in old installation including the user guide (~/Variations-6.1/public_html/use/)
11. If using CAS authentication, copy cas jars over from old installation: cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/lib/cas* /home/dmlserv/app/lib/
12. If using Kerberos authentication, copy krb5.conf over from old installation: cp /home/dmlserv/Variations-6.1/conf/server/krb5.conf /home/dmlserv/app/conf/server/
13. Replace the Variations configuration block in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf with the following (as root):

    #
    # Variations specific configuration
    #
    ScriptAlias /variations/cgi-bin/ "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/app/public_html/cgi-bin/"
    
    <Directory "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/app/public_html/cgi-bin">
        AllowOverride All
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        SetEnv VARIATIONS_HOME ${VARIATIONS_HOME}
    </Directory>
    
    Alias /variations/ "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/app/public_html/"
    
    <Directory "${VARIATIONS_HOME}/app/public_html">
        AllowOverride All
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
        SetEnv VARIATIONS_HOME ${VARIATIONS_HOME}
    </Directory>
    

14. (As root) Edit /etc/sysconfig/httpd by adding the following line: source /etc/profile.d/variations.sh

    Make sure that the $VARIATIONS_HOME environment variable is set for root when restarting Apache.

15. Restart Apache (as root): /etc/init.d/httpd restart
16. (Re)start the Variations server application.

    Make sure to merge any added entries to your crontab before replacing it.

17. Replace crontab with 6.2 crontab: crontab /home/dmlserv/app/bin/variations.crontab
18. If you have the webapps installed, then do the following:
    1. Create the symlink to the access pages: ln -s /home/dmlserv/content/access/audio /home/dmlserv/app/public_html/audio-access
    2. Follow the instructions here to upgrade the webapps to 6.2

Step 2. Upgrade Variations clients from 6.* to 6.2

Ideally, this should be done by creating a new Variations installer based on a Variations 6.2 client Windows zip or Mac tar.

1. Download and unzip (or untar) the 6.2 client distribution
2. Copy over any configuration files you modified for your 6.* client. See Configuring the Client for a list of client configuration files. See Windows Client Changes and Mac Client Changes below for files that have changed in 6.2 and should be merged with 6.* copies.
3. Follow the directions in Building the Client Installer

Server Changes

Windows Client Changes

Mac Client Changes