Help! Patching problem!

[ysu]

Gents, I'm trying to patch an SMF 2.0.13, and I'm not sure what's happening.  Pray help, I'm at my wit's end.
I've read the upgrading, then the patching manual pages, searched as well, but I can't find any info. (btw it'd be very-VERY good to have these as one, instead of two pages; it's confusing as hell! To me upgrading=patching, and I think pretty much everyone not well versed with your usage of this terminology will run into the same problem)

There's no FTP on the server, so management is via ssh.

I've tried the package manager, I've tried copying the files manually in place, but the forum still says it's on 2.0.13 - I just don't know how to trigger the actual upgrade (sorry: patching) to happen.

The package manager seems to run ok, but I've no feedback, and no problems on the list of files page; it says "skipping file" in a few cases - but those files are non-existent, so it should be all good IMO (eg ./Themes/default/languages/index.english-utf8.php)
In any case they don't show up as error.   There seems to be no error reported on the page.  Still, I've chmod'ed all files to 666 - still no love.

I've got no "install now" at the end (the patching help page refers to this), only a "proceed" button, but hitting that seems to do nothing.

So as I was saying I'm at my at a complete loss what to try - please help!

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If you are at 2.0.13, go to Admin -> Package Manager, you should see a message up top that an upgrade is available.  Click the link, it will download the 2.0.14 upgrade, then click install.  If there are no errors (skipped files are not errors), proceed with install.  You should get a confirmation message, then go back to Home, you should see 2.0.14 in copyright.  If it works, repeat the process to upgrade to 2.0.15.  Directory permissions should be 755, files 644.

[ysu]

Ok, that's the first thing I have tried earlier - but it just does not work.

At package manager, find package "SMF 2.0.14 Update", click "install mod"
Next screen all seems fine, except there is no "install now" button, only two others; "test connection" and "proceed"

None of which does anything noticeable - the "proceed" re-loads the page is all.


Hm...I've just noticed there's some text in the FTP section - same colour & bg as the rest of the page saying:

Some of the files the package manager needs to modify are not writable. This needs to be changed by logging into FTP and using it to chmod or create the files and folders. Your FTP information may be temporarily cached for proper operation of the package manager. Note you can also do this manually using an FTP client - to view a list of the affected files please click here.

How?  All files have been chmodded to 666, directories to 777.  And even then: which files?   


Can I avoid this process and simply install manually somehow?  This is doing my head in...

[Illori]

follow https://custom.simplemachines.org/upgrades/index.php?action=upgrade;file=smf_patch_2.0.14.tar.gz;smf_version=2.0.13 to complete a manual upgrade, or just do a clean install per the wiki instructions.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Directories should be 755, files 644.  Some servers are blocking 777 for security reasons.

[ysu]

Directories should be 755, files 644.  Some servers are blocking 777 for security reasons.

It's an aws ec2 instance, my own, so nothing is blocked.

644 will not be write-able later for apache so (for the update) it may not suffice.  (eg I'm uploading with ec2-user, and apache is running as httpd - the file at least needs to be httpd group and 664)
Of course the alternative is to chown all files to httpd - but then uploading is becoming a two-step proces...

[ysu]

Oh, oh, I've found it!

Under the admin/package manager, there's a "file permissions" tab.
The /var/www/html/ folder itself wasn't writable for httpd!

Thanks, gents, mystery solved.

( the thing is I keep forgetting that on ec2 instances the document-root folder's permissions are re-set sometimes, not sure when but it's something to keep an eye on )