Fastest way to upgrade from 4.0.d to 4.2

[palma]

Hi All,

First, congratulations for the product and community. Really glad to use the product since 2012.

However, I noticed that it is time to upgrade to 4.2 as it may include lots of fixes and changes.

I'm reading a lot since yesterday and it still is not clear what is the simple way to upgrade a basic default installation on Windows of Alfresco Community 4.0.0.

I'm using a VirtualMachine with just the alfresco installed on c:\alfresco and backup isnt really a concern, as I regularly backup ALL the virtualmachine (OS + Files) with snapshots.

What I want to know is how to upgrade with a simple way as if something fails I can restore the snapshot in seconds. So, the article in the Wiki stating that I should setup a test enviroiment, make backup of the root.dir and avoiding an in-place upgrade seems exaggerated for my case.

I read about the WAR download. Is this the case for me? How to proceed? I read that 4.0.0 is tomcat6 and the 4.2 requires tomcat 7. So I can't use just the WAR? Does it work if I just run the setup wizard with default settings or it will erase my repository?

I do not use any extensions or customizations and really dont want to spend a week to upgrade Alfresco.

Sorry for this post that I believe is in the "starter level", but I found out the Wiki is written for "gurus" and not regular guys like me that uses Alfresco in a company with 3 employees.

[bisana]

Hi
I have done few up-gradation, I followed the following method 
I have taken this from the forum post
http://forums.alfresco.com/comment/130430/

At the exsiting server:- 
    Disable indexing in the present system, stop and start stop, 
    Take backup of Alfresco installation DIR
    Take backup of DB
At the new server :- 
   Restore the DB
   Install the new alfresco installation (imp:-do not start the service) 
   copy the alf_dir of the old instance  directory to the new inststallation directory (Please copy only 2 directory named "contentstore"  and  "contentstore.deleted") (Do not copy other directory)
   start the new alfresco instance 
   You have now upgraded the instance without indexing 
   enable indexing at alfresc-global.properties 
  restart the service 
   You have a upgraded system with solr indexing enabled
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[palma]

Bisana, thanks for your reply.

How should I take a backup and then restore the DB? I dont know the password to connect to it. Is it just a file on the filesystem to copy/move or I should create a backup on a specific management tool like I do with Microsoft SQL?

Sorry about this silly question, but I am not used to non-Microsoft database and servers.

[bisana]

You will get the user name and password for the DB from "alfressco-gloabl.properties"