Fixing a broken OwnCloud upgrade using Docker
This is the story of how I tried to upgrade my owncloud, got it wrong and then spent a few hours fixing it using Docker. I’m documenting it here to share the solution I came up with.
If however, you did what I did and first upgraded to Debian 9 only to find out that owncloud refuses to upgrade over multiple major versions: read on.
How it started
As I was figuring out OrgMode (which I hope to write a post about soon) I found out that my owncloud server was getting seriously long in the tooth. In fact, it was lagging so far behind that the latest owncloud app for android refused to connect to it.
Since I had some time on my hands around the holidays I figured I’d upgrade it, which also included upgrading my home server to Debian 9, since I was still running Debian 8.
The plan I had in mind was:
- Upgrade my server to Debian 9
- Run the owncloud upgrade wizard to upgrade the owncloud database and data folder
- Happily sync my stuff
The first step went smoothly enough: I followed the steps documented here and had no problems. Then I called up the owncloud URL, and clicked upgrade button only to be greeted by this:
It turns out that owncloud will only upgrade one major version at the time. Before the upgrade I was running owncloud 7.0, but Debian 9 came with 10.0.10. This meant I’d need to follow the path
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7.0 → 8.0 → 8.1 → 8.2 → 9.0 → 9.1.8 → 10.0.10
to bring my database and data folder up-to-date so my new owncloud install could use it.
First attempt: Debian packages
After some searching I found this list of older versions, which helpfully listed both Debian packages and tarballs. I figured I’d just grab the Debian packages for the older versions and run the updates one at a time.
This strategy failed though, since the packages for many of the older versions I needed were only available for Debian 7 and 8. I spent a little time trying to get them installed nonetheless, but gave up since it seemed likely to end with a broken server.
Second attempt: tarballs
Well, owncloud is basically just a bunch of PHP files, right? So I don’t really need the Debian packages, I can just grab the tarballs and run it that way!
This turned out to be correct in theory, except that Debian 9 comes with PHP7 and owncloud didn’t start supporting PHP7 until version 8.2. Since I needed to upgrade to 8.0 and 8.1 first and I wasn’t willing to try and force PHP5 on my new system, this turned out to be a dead end as well.
Third attempt: Docker
But wait… running software that requires an older userland on a newer system: that sounds like a perfect usecase for Docker!
The plan
For this to work, I’d need to run a Docker image that has Apache and owncloud, and then run it in the following way:
- Shut down Apache
- Run the Docker container in host-networking mode
- Volume mount my owncloud data folder
- Volume mount the MySQL (actually MariaDB) socket
- Volume mount my current owncloud config, so the wizard can use and update it
This looks roughly like this:
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sudo docker run --net=host \
-v /storage/owncloud/:/storage/owncloud \
-v /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock:/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock \
-v /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php:/var/www/owncloud/config/config.php \
--name owncloud --rm some-owncloud-image
Since the Docker container uses the host networking, it will bind to the host’s web ports.
Finding a base-image
First I figured I’d head over to Docker hub and grab an image, except they only start with owncloud 9. I wasn’t ready to give up on this strategy yet though, so I decided if there was no public image I’d make my own.
I found a very nice example of a minimal Debian image which ran Apache and PHP5, so I used that as a base to expand upon.
First upgrade: 7.0 to 8.0
The first upgrade would be to 8.0.
For this I needed 3 files:
start.sh Start-script, copied verbatim from the Github example I used
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#!/bin/bash
source /etc/apache2/envvars
exec apache2 -D FOREGROUND
owncloud.conf Apache config file to expose the owncloud site on /owncloud
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<VirtualHost *:80>
Alias /owncloud "/var/www/owncloud/"
<Directory /var/www/owncloud/>
Options +FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>
SetEnv HOME /var/www/owncloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/owncloud
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Dockerfile the Dockerfile to build the image
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FROM debian:8
MAINTAINER Alex Kuiper <alex@nightwhistler.net>
RUN echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/ownCloud:/community:/8.0/Debian_8.0/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/isv:ownCloud:community:8.0.list
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y apt-utils
## Install base packages
RUN apt-get -yq install \
apache2 \
php5 \
libapache2-mod-php5 \
curl \
ca-certificates \
php5-curl \
php5-json \
php5-odbc \
php5-sqlite \
php5-mysql \
php5-mcrypt
RUN /usr/sbin/php5enmod mcrypt && a2enmod rewrite && mkdir /bootstrap
RUN DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y --force-yes install owncloud
ADD owncloud.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf
ADD start.sh /bootstrap/start.sh
RUN a2ensite owncloud
RUN chmod 755 /bootstrap/start.sh && chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html
RUN chown www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/config -R
EXPOSE 80
ENTRYPOINT ["/bootstrap/start.sh"]
After that, building the image is a matter of
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docker build . -t owncloud80
and then running it with:
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sudo docker run --net=host \
-v /storage/owncloud/:/storage/owncloud \
-v /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock:/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock \
-v /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php:/var/www/owncloud/config/config.php \
--name owncloud --rm owncloud80
I opened up /owncloud in my browser, clicked “upgrade” and… success!
Now that this strategy had proven to work, it was a simple matter of rinse and repeat. For the next steps I’ll only show the changes that needed to be made to the Dockerfile.
From 8.0 to 8.2
This step mostly changes the owncloud package source, and adds apt-transport-https
Dockerfile
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FROM debian:8
MAINTAINER Alex Kuiper <alex@nightwhistler.net>
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y apt-utils apt-transport-https
RUN echo 'deb http://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/8.2/Debian_8.0/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list
RUN apt-get update
## Install base packages
...
From 8.2 to 9.0
This step only changes the owncloud package source:
Dockerfile
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...
RUN echo 'deb http://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/9.0/Debian_8.0/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list
...
From 9.0 to 9.1.8
This step also only changes the owncloud package source:
Dockerfile
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...
RUN echo 'deb http://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/9.1/Debian_8.0/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list
...
From 9.0 to 10.0.10
This step was different, since now I had arrived at the point where the native Debian owncloud installation should be able to perform the upgrade. So, I turned on the Apache service again, went to the owncloud page and clicked on the “Upgrade” button.
This time I was rewarded with a successful migration… I had an up-to-date owncloud!
Conclusions
Though this was an educational experience, I could have saved myself a lot of work by doing better research before I had started the upgrade. Still, since there is a non-zero chance that I’m not the only person this could happen to I figured I’d write up my solution and hopefully save the next person some time.