Is doing the standard pull and rebuild appropriate at this point? I’m reading that may have not worked for some people.
AI-generated summary
A user, tisawyer, is seeking advice on upgrading from Discourse version 3.1.0.beta2 to the latest beta. pfaffman recommends a command-line rebuild, citing it’s “almost never a bad idea,” especially if the web-based upgrade fails. The current version is 3.1.0.beta4. Ed_S notes that while a command-line rebuild is generally safe, it may involve extra costs such as downtime and disk space requirements. However, pfaffman reiterates that a command-line rebuild is a safe approach and is often the first step in resolving issues, with the exception of potentially unknown database upgrades. Both users emphasize the importance of taking a backup before the upgrade.
You mean that you tried the web-based upgrade and it failed?
Yes, a command-line rebuild is in order. It is almost never a bad idea to do a command line rebuild–especially if something else didn’t work.
The current version is 3.1.0.beta4.
That’s the keyword. Thank you confirming it’s ok this time.
Hmm, I’m wondering if it’s ever a bad idea to do a command line rebuild. My understanding is, there’s no extra risk. But there is potentially an extra cost: it’s slightly less convenient to do it; with a standard installation it will cause more downtime; and it needs more free disk space to do it. If you’re very short of space, that means more care needed.
In any case, I strongly recommend taking a backup immediately before any upgrade, and downloading that backup for safe keeping. (A snapshot of the machine, if your provider offers you the facility, could also be useful, but it’s not a backup.)
It’s hard for me to think of a time that a command line rebuild is less safe than one from the web interface, but maybe if there is a database upgrade that you don’t know is going to happen? But the first thing to do if your have virtually any issue is to rebuild.