I’m currently managing an XWiki instance running on XWiki Debian 16.2.0, and I’m trying to upgrade it to the latest 17.x.x version.
To test the upgrade process, I created an exact copy of the server in a separate environment. First, I upgraded the OS to Debian 12 (following this guide: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/update-upgrade-debian-11-to-debian-12-bookworm/), which seemed to work without issues. Then I upgraded to Tomcat 10, which came with the latest XWiki version.
However, that’s where the problems started:
All of my previous configuration files were lost during the upgrade. This has caused a lot of issues, as I had many custom settings spread across multiple files.
My questions:
Is there a way to upgrade XWiki while preserving all existing config files and settings?
Reconfiguring everything from scratch would be extremely time-consuming.
I’m facing plugin issues – especially with the XWiki Standard Flavor.
It throws errors, and I can’t update or remove it. I’ve tried several things, but nothing worked.
Attachments are not displaying correctly.
Even though some attachments are listed, they appear as N/A, and some have been deleted entirely.
I’m logged in as an admin, so permission shouldn’t be the issue.
Has anyone faced similar issues during upgrade? Any tips, best practices, or documentation that might help me upgrade smoothly while retaining all settings and fixing these bugs would be greatly appreciated.
You would have to give more details on how those configuration files (and which configuration files exactly) were lost. At least for XWiki configuration files, upgrading to XWiki 17 should behave as usual (propose a 3 ways merge for xwiki.cfg, xwiki.properties and warn about conflicts for others files in /etc/xwiki/*).
I noticed that the following files were reset during the update:
server.xml
tomcat.cfg
xwiki.cfg
Could you clarify what you mean by a “3-way merge” for xwiki.cfg and xwiki.properties? I’m not entirely sure how that process is supposed to work during the upgrade. Does the installer prompt for the merge, or is it something that needs to be done manually?
If there is a change in the standard files, and you have customization, dpkg will show you a prompt asking you what to do (and one of the proposal is to apply a 3 ways merge).
I doubt those files were reset, tomcat9 and tomcat10 Debian packages just have different configuration files.
Ah, I see. It’s possible that it did prompt me with the 3-way merge option, but I must have skipped it or clicked something else without realizing. I’ll make sure to pay closer attention the next time I try installing it.
As for the configuration files after the Tomcat upgrade, all the settings were reset. HTTPS stopped working, the Single Sign-On configuration was gone, and several other custom settings were lost. So it definitely felt like a reset.
On a related note, I do have a different question: would you recommend upgrading to the latest 16.x.x version of Tomcat, or should I go ahead and try upgrading to 17.x.x?
Again, your configuration is probably still there, but on Debian tomcat9 and tomcat10 have completely different configuration files locations.
I guess you are talking about XWiki versions here and not Tomcat (Tomcat versions are 9 and 10). In general, the choice between LTS or STABLE branches depends on if you care more about stability or new features, see https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Download/. In the very specific case of XWiki 16 vs 17 there is a bonus criterion: the version of Debian you want to use will decide the version of Tomcat (9 or 10) you will end up with and so which version of XWiki is compatible with it.
