It’s definitely recommended you use SVN to update your Helpdesk, but if you have no other choice there is an alternative. The next best (and possibly only) option is to download the zipped build of Cerb4 and replace your existing copy. While it sounds simple enough, you should take some precautions along the way.

Prepare

• First things first, make a backup of your current Cerb4 files and database just to be safe.
• Next, copy the database info from the top of framework.config.php which includes the name, user and password.

define('APP_DB_DRIVER','mysql');
define('APP_DB_HOST','localhost');
define('APP_DB_DATABASE','dbname');
define('APP_DB_USER','dbuser');
define('APP_DB_PASS','mypassword');
define('APP_DB_PCONNECT',false);

• Administrators are sometimes required to add IP addresses to the framework.config.php file, so they can finish an upgrade or run a cron. Therefore if you included any unique IPs that you need to hold onto in the AUTHORIZED_IPS_DEFAULTS, copy those as well.

define('AUTHORIZED_IPS_DEFAULTS', '127.0.0.1');

• Copy the entire Cerb4 storage/ directory, to save attachments and mail that hasn’t been parsed yet.

Finish

• After you’ve “backed everything up”, now you should be able to overlay the zipped files on top of your old install. Copy and paste the extracted files to the cerb4/ directory.
• Swap the information you copied from before into the new framework.config.php file.
• Replace the storage/ directory.
• And finally readjust the file permissions if necessary. As usual check your httpd.conf file for the appropriate ‘User’ and ‘Group’ settings to replace apache:apache.

cd cerb4/
chown -R apache:apache *
chmod -R 0774 storage/

That’s it! If all went well, load up the Helpdesk in your browser and you should be taken to the login screen. Or if this was a larger update, the “click here to finish the upgrade” screen first.

Run into any issues? Post here in the comments.

-joegeck@wgm & hildy@wgm