When is upgrade actually possible from admin dashboard?

Product Support

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around the reliability and predictability of upgrading Discourse from the admin dashboard. Wall-E expresses confusion about when the “upgrade all” button is available and whether upgrades can be done without terminal commands, noting the button is currently greyed out. TheDarkWizard clarifies that the Docker Manager must be updated first, which prevents the Discourse upgrade button from being active. Heliosurge confirms that upgrades can be done via the dashboard but recommends a command-line rebuild every few months, citing issues that were resolved after a rebuild. pfaffman adds that while Docker Manager should detect when a rebuild is needed, it doesn’t always do so, and some instances, like dashboard.literatecomputing.com, automate the process with a single click.

1

After a few years of maintaining our Discourse instance, I am still confused about the upgrade options. This thread adds to the confusion.

  1. Can we ever upgrade our instance from the Discourse menu (screenshot below) without having to go to a terminal to launch the rebuild command?

Screenshot 2024-08-22 at 10.14.48 AM
Screenshot 2024-08-22 at 10.14.48 AM1922×596 49.8 KB

  1. When is the “upgrade all” button actually available to the admin? Currently, I have it greyed (see below)

Screenshot 2024-08-22 at 10.14.57 AM
Screenshot 2024-08-22 at 10.14.57 AM1912×1528 261 KB

  1. And what this thread doesn’t answer is how can we guess when it’s not going to work? I find this feature of upgrading from Admin dashboard is doing disservice if we have to “try and see” if it works. If that dashboard menu isn’t deterministic, it’s a lot risky, time-consuming guess work, which makes me *not want to try it at all and directly go to a terminal to do the upgrade. So was there any improvement recently to make things more predictable and “safe” to use that feature from the dashboard without having to go through a terminal to do the upgrade and rebuild?
2

Hi,

When docker_manager has an update, the update button for discourse is greyed out. You always have to do docker_manager first.

Hope this helps.

3

The answer is in part yes. You can use the app’s web interface to update Discourse. However iirc they recommend performing a command line rebuild every couple of months.

Recently I updated using the panel. But had weird glitches in the interface. Performing command line rebuild fixed the issues I was experiencing.

4

Sometimes a full rebuild is required to do the upgrade. In theory, docker manager knows when a rebuild is required, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Dashboard.literatecomputing.com will do a command line upgrade with a click.