Wiki functions, but missing major functionality after upgrade

Help / Discuss
#1

I made a big mistake, and updated Ubuntu from 16.04 (java 8, tomcat8) to 18.04 (java 11, tomcat8) at the same time as upgrading the wiki from 11.2 to 11.6.1. I now have the following symptoms:

No Distribution Wizard, even after following the instructions here: https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/UserGuide/Features/DistributionWizard#HTroubleshooting

No Navigation, either in the left-hand Navigation Panel or in the Breadcrumb drop-downs. The Navigation Panel is just blank, the dropdowns say index.documentTree.empty.

Broken page titles and links in the admin page, which say things like: administration.sectionTitle.global – the weird thing about this is if I change the theme back and forth a couple of times, the page titles start showing up.

No CKEditor, just some funky older-looking editor on the pages.

No panels, especially anything needing the Document Tree Macro say:

Unknown macro: documentTree.
The "documentTree" macro is not in the list of registered macros. Verify the spelling or contact your administrator.

I uninstalled Glowroot (it was throwing errors in catalina.out) and I was slowly able to upgrade all of the old Extensions, so those are all as modern as they can be. If it is helpful I can provide catalina.out or other logs files. It is hard for me to tell what is useful errors in that log.

I am sure there are more symptoms, but this is just the main list. I am at my wits end here, any help would be appreciated. Even if it is “backup the wiki and reinstall on Ubuntu 16.04” (which is on my roadmap of things to try next). I just need some next-steps guidance. Thanks in advance!

Quick edit: I already diff / merged the old and new configuration files, so those are all as modern as possible as far as I can tell.

#2

This post was a huge help for me: https://forum.xwiki.org/t/problems-upgrading-xwiki/5715

First I upgraded glowroot, which fixed errors in catalina.out. Next, I saw the same errors in Solr, so I deleted /var/lib/xwiki/data/solr, which caused the Distribution Wizard to show up! I am so thankful that I have my wiki back after 3 months!

#3

I’m glad it worked for you @crw. Note that a better option is to always check the release notes and especially the backward compatibility section. Right now it’s a bit painful since you need to check that for all releases between the version you have and the version you’re upgrading to, but it’s important if you don’t want bad surprises. We’re trying to minimize the manual steps but sometimes it happens (like here with SOLR). BTW with XWiki 11.9 or 11.10 (don’t recall which one) we removed this manual step for SOLR and made it automatic :slight_smile:

Thanks for posting back.

#4

11.8 :slight_smile:

#5

:slight_smile:

#6

In fact I do read the Release Notes. Going back through them,

https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleaseNotes/Data/XWiki/11.4/#HBackwardCompatibilityandMigrationNotes

I found this line here:

If you’re upgrading XWiki you have to delete the ’ solr ’ folder from the configured permanent directory of your XWiki instance in order for the Solr search to work.

I definitely missed this instruction. I think partially because I am not necessarily aware that I am operating Solr. This indicates the wiki failures will be limited to Solr search, and possibly all search functionality. If search functionality died, this message would make sense to me. However it does not indicate the entire wiki would be broken. I think this would be better stated as

You are required to delete the ’ solr ’ folder from the configured permanent directory of your XWiki instance. Failure to do so will result in the Distribution Wizard failing to load, rendering the wiki unusable.

It might even be better to have this info as an Upgrade Checklist. A list of actions required to upgrade to the latest version. I would also keep notes in the Upgrade section such as “If you are upgrading from 11.4…” (at least for minor releases of the same version). This note disappears from a few release notes and then shows up again at 11.7.

#7

Sounds good. Feel free to edit the page and improve it.

I don’t think this is needed since it’s now automatic since XS 11.8 (see prevous reply). Unless I misunderstood you. Where exactly would you want to have this “Upgrade Checklist”? Note that each RN has an upgrade checklist and this is already where the info about solr is located.

That’s because we don’t include past backward compatibility/upgrade notess in each following release notes. But since lots of users had this solr issue, someone (possibly me) tried to make it more visible by including it again in 11.7.

The future idea I have is to improve the ReleaseNotes app so that upgrade & backward compat info are structured data, allowing the user to compute a custom Release Notes from his previous version to the version to upgrade to, and see the aggregated info. This feature already exists but it currently only aggregates change items and not upgrade & backward compat info. See http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/RN-34

WDYT?