How to update Drupal using an Islandora base box

[Franziska Geisser]

Hi,

I am in the process of developing a proof of concept to test the feasibility of using Islandora for a major project. In order to quickly implement new features and to be able to start again without too much troubles if something goes wrong, I use the default installation provided by the Islandora base box.

From the beginning I was irritated by the red Drupal update warnings in the UI, and I wanted to get rid of them. I tried to update Drupal using Composer as described in the documentation, but this always resulted in an error (probably due to some file system permissions), and the application was broken. I also tried changing the file system permissions for the www-data user and installing module updates through the UI, but then, too, either the application was completely wrecked (localhost:8000 not responding anymore), or the connection to the fedora repository didn't work (404 error).

Therefore I have been asking myself: Is it perhaps simply not intended that you run Drupal updates when working with an Islandora base box? Should I abandon the idea altogether, or are there alternative ways that are not mentioned in the documentation?

Any hints are welcome.

Thanks,

Franziska

[R Le Faive]

Hi Franziska,

I get your frustration. It's an old Drupal VM (probably from a couple of years ago by now!) and I don't think anybody considered what it would need to stay viable until the next release.

I think we're just finishing up a testing sprint so our next release should be soon, and it should (I hope) mean a new version of that base box. 

Just to clarify, there are a number of options available:

- online sandbox, sandbox.islandora.ca (apparently refreshes with new code and modules nightly)

- sandbox vm, from release 1.1.0

- Islandora base box on Vagrant Cloud (frozen over 2y ago) (the one you're using?)

- Use Vagrant and Ansible to build a local VM (haven't done this for a while but it should still work, and get you up-to-date modules)

- Use Docker to install the sandbox (not sure if this is frozen at 1.1.0?) 

- Use Docker to install "locally" (spinning up a number of containers - takes a bit of memory but gets you the latest code)

[Franziska Geisser]

Thanks for your feedback! Next step will be to try the Vagrant and Ansible installation.

[Franziska Geisser]

Is there a rough estimate as to when the new release and new base box will be available?

[Danny Lamb]

Hi Franziska,

We just wrapped up a testing sprint, which is pretty much the last part of the release process.  We're still evaluating some things and doing cleanup, etc... but you can probably expect the release to happen within the next two weeks.

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[Franziska Geisser]

Hi Danny,

This is good news indeed! Will the new release come with a new base box? That would be great - looking forward to it!

Regards,

Franziska

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[Danny Lamb]

Yes, it will 😀  As part of the process I'll upload a new box to vagrant cloud.

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[Franziska Geisser]

Since the new Islandora release is still a little while to come, I invested some more time in updating Drupal Core and Modules in my old vagrant box and found a way to do so without breaking the VM. The only thing that doesn't get updated properly is the Solr Search API. In the UI it says "Unsupported" and recommends that I upgrade to 8.x-3.9  - but the installed version is also 8.x.-3.9. What does "unsupported" mean, and what do I have to do to get a supported version installed? According to the Islandora documentation one should install version 3.0 (https://islandora.github.io/documentation/installation/manual/installing_solr/#installing-search_api_solr). Does that mean that I have to somehow downgrade my version of the Solr Search API? I am experiencing some problems with facets that might be related to the version issue. Any hints are appreciated. Drupal Core is now on 8.9.17.

[Hanke, Mirko]

Hi Franziska,

 

The manual installation documentation is currently out of date. Jakov Vežić did an amazing job to thoroughly update it a few days ago (https://github.com/Islandora/documentation/pull/1879), however the pull request is still pending review.

 

According to the updated documentation, the recommended search_api_solr version is 4.2 (cf. https://www.drupal.org/project/search_api_solr). I haven’t been able to test this myself though, so I’m afraid I cannot say anything about possible pitfalls on an upgrade path from 8.x-3.9 of the module to 4.x versions.

 

(Incidentally, Nigel Bank’s Islandora Advanced Search Module [https://islandora.github.io/documentation/user-documentation/advanced-search/], which AFAIK is about to ship as part of Islandora soon will require an update to search_api_solr >=4.1 upon installing. Again, I cannot speak to possible side effects of that update.)

 

Mit besten Grüßen,

Mirko