Steven's picture
Steven - Tue, 2014/04/01 - 18:08

Hello,

I have installed and configured the applience however I have noticed that it is several versions behind. What can I do to upgrade the applience? Is there a repo I can add or a suggesed script? Thanks.

Forum: 
Support
Tags: 
security
upgrade
otrs
Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Wed, 2014/04/02 - 01:07

If you have a specific need to update (i.e. a bug in the current version or a feature you need that is only in a newer version) then it can be done, but it may not be that fun...

The version included in the current TKL release comes from the Debian main repo. The major advantage of that is that it will auto apply any security issues that arise with backported patches. So although the version will be a little old it will be secure without any user interaction. Also TKLBAM is configured OOTB to work...

The next best option would be to if v3.2.11 is new enough. Then you can install from Wheezy-backports (have a look here). This will also have security updates available (although they won't auto install - you'll need to apt-get update && apt-get install -t wheezy-backports otrs otrs2 to check for and install updates). If you wish to use TKLBAM for backups, it will probably work OOTB but hasn't been tested. I highly recommend trials to make sure (although you should be regularly testing backups anyway...).

The third option (And IMO the least desirable - unless you have a specific need, as per first paragraph) is to install the current upstream version. If you go that path there will be no security updates at all and you will need to reinstall from upstream whenever a new version is released to keep your OTRS up to date and secure. It will also require more work to set up... Also keep in mind that if you wish to use TKLBAM for backups (and future migrations) you will need to tweak it's settings so that the correct data is included in the backups. Google found this although I'm not sure if you'll need to install all those packages (I imagine most of them should already be installed...). The generic Linux instructions for installing from source are here You will also need to remove the existing OTRS packages, otherwise they will conflict. I'm not sure what other steps will be required. I suggest that you do a bit of checking/investigating as you may even find that starting from the TKL LAMP appliance may be easier than trying to update the existing OTRS appliance from upstream!?

Jeremy Davis's picture

Jeremy Davis - Mon, 2017/08/28 - 09:51
But it may be easiest to install it yourself from upstream source code. You could use LAMP as a base, then follow the instructions as noted here.

If you want to have a go at that, TurnKey is based on Debian (v14.x = Debian Jessie/8), so follow the instructions relevant to that. You can ignore the SELinux warning (it's not enabled on TurnKey).

Extra note if you're planning on using TKLBAM, if you install from source, install to /opt as recommended and it should automatically get picked up by TKLBAM.

I did also find that there is a much newer version of OTRS; 5.0.16 in jessie-backports (it's in 'non-free' because some javascript components are pre-compiled and don't provide source code). So that would give you a newer version, but would still install using the Debian FHS. Keep in mind too that the future of jessie-backports is somewhat unclear at this point. It may become unsupported sometime soon, whereas the old version should remain part of the Debian LTS (so supported until April 2020).

If instead you want to tweak the plugins you've got (or if you want to upgrade to the jessie-backports package), it should be relatively easy (arguably easier than doing a full install - but YMMV). After having a quick look at the default Jessie package file list it appears that most of the core program is in /usr/share/otrs with the front end components (the webUI mostly from what I can gather) in /var/lib/otrs/.

As a general rule, try to avoid manually putting anything in /usr (with the exception of /usr/local) if you can. It's reserved for "read-only" data and package management writes to there, so your files may be overwritten or broken by future updates, or alternatively may break future updates.

If you'd like to share more info about the plugins and where they are expecting to go, then perhaps I could assist you to work it out?

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