Periodically a new release of the Astrogrid portal will be made. First and most importantly, read any accompanying documentation for the new upgrade. It may be that configuration options and details have changed. You need to know this prior to altering your existing system. The recommended way is to have a test installation alongside your live installation, running in a different instance of tomcat. Upgrade your test system and ensure it works before you migrate the changes from your test system to your live system.
In order to upgrade in a controlled fashion, you must ensure you have a record of the configuration details for the system about to be replaced. Refer to the quick-start configuration page for all the normal places where configuration settings for your existing portal are held. Please note, however, that you need to record all changes that you think relevant, so if you have found a need previously to change other settings not mentioned within the documentation, note them down aswell.
The portal installer will guide you through the basic install / upgrade process. If you have previously used it to install the portal, you can use it to restore the basic settings when you upgrade. However, see quick-start configuration page for other places that may need manual adjustment. For these you will need to refer to your own records and edit some files. If the files involved are xml based, the recommended way is to use an xml editor. However, a normal text editor is suffice with care and the use of a suitable browser to check the validity of the xml. The recommendation is still to upgrade a test system before migrating the changes to the live system.
First download the latest portal war file. Then refer to the quick-start configuration page where the relevant files that require alteration are given. If you have altered other settings, refer to your own records, or examine the current system for the relevant alterations. Copy the war file into the test system tomcat webapps directory. Tomcat should deploy automatically, but if not use the tomcat Application Manager to force a reload. You will then need to edit the relevant files. If the files involved are xml based, the recommended way is to use an xml editor. However, a normal text editor is suffice with care and the use of a suitable browser to check the validity of the xml. Then either stop and restart tomcat, or use the tomcat Application Manager again to reload the portal application. If you are satisfied with the deployment, migrate the changes into the live system.