Canvas LMS/Upgrading

Instruction source

All instructions are from the Canvas LMS Github wiki

Requirements

These upgrade instructions make the following assumptions:

1. you installed canvas lms via git
2. redis is running at a version greater than 2.6
3. you are logged in as the original user who installed canvas and ran the git and gem installs
4. you've created a backup or snapshot before continuing
5. there are no local changes you've made to the canvas code that are different than the stable version on github

Upgrade Source

Start by logging in as the original user that installed Canvas. This is very important as you'll encounter permission issues with git.

~/var/canvas$ sudo su helpdesk
~/var/canvas$ git fetch && git reset --hard origin/stable
...
HEAD is now at da056ac treesame commit of origin/stable/2016-01-09

Upgrade and Install Bundled Gems

~/var/canvas$ bundle update addressable
~/var/canvas$ bundle install

Reason:

If you get the same error as I did:

/var/canvas$ bundle install
Fetching source index from https://rubygems.org/
Resolving dependencies.....
You have requested:
  addressable = 2.3.8

The bundle currently has addressable locked at 2.3.5.
Try running `bundle update addressable`

Then instead first run:

~/var/canvas$ bundle update addressable

and you should get:

Your bundle is updated!
Gems in the groups sqlite and mysql were not installed.

Follow that up with:

~/var/canvas$ bundle install

and you should get:

Your bundle is complete!
Gems in the groups sqlite and mysql were not installed.
It was installed into ./vendor/bundle

Upgrade and Install Node Modules

~/var/canvas$ npm install

Set Permissions

You'll need to temporarily change permissions to allow the update (my user that performs updates is helpdesk):

/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 660 ./config/*.yml
/var/canvas$ sudo chown canvasuser:helpdesk ./config/*.yml

Complied Assets

With the permissions set:

~/var/canvas$ RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake canvas:compile_assets

Reason:

If you get an error:

rake aborted!
Undumpable Exception -- #<Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/domain.yml>

Then you'll need to temporarily change permissions to allow the update:

/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 660 ./config/domain.yml

The above makes the assumption that the user you are logged in as is either the file owner or part of the group owner.
Once the permission is set, try to upgrade again. If successful then:

/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 400 ./config/domain.yml

Database Migrations

With the permissions set:

~/var/canvas$ RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:migrate

For some odd reason I still got an unspecified error, even with the permissions set. I ran it a second time with --trace so I could see a more verbose error output and it completed successfully?

Reason:

If you get an error:

rake aborted!
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/cache_store.yml
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/redis.yml
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/database.yml
encryption key required, see security.yml.example
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/outgoing_mail.yml
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/file_store.yml
StandardError: An error has occurred, this and all later migrations canceled:

Just like before, you'll need to set the appropriate permissions:

/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 660 ./config/*.yml

The above makes the assumption that the user you are logged in as is either the file owner or part of the group owner. I was not, so I had to:

/var/canvas$ sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/*.yml

Once the permission is set, try to upgrade again. If successful then:

/var/canavs$ sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/*.yml
sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/cache_store.yml
sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/redis.yml
/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 400 ./config/*.yml

Notification types

~/var/canvas$ RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:load_notifications

If you get an error:

rake aborted!
Errno::EACCES: Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/brandable_css.yml

Just like before, you'll need to set the appropriate permissions:

/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 660 ./config/*.yml

The above makes the assumption that the user you are logged in as is either the file owner or part of the group owner. I was not, so I had to:

/var/canvas$ sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/*.yml

Once the permission is set, try to upgrade again. If successful then:

/var/canavs$ sudo chown canvasuser:canvasgroup ./config/*.yml
sudo chown canvasuser:root ./config/cache_store.yml
sudo chown canvasuser:root ./config/redis.yml
/var/canvas$ sudo chmod 400 ./config/*.yml

Restart Services

~/var/canvas$ sudo service postgresql restart
~/var/canvas$ sudo service apache2 restart 

Troubleshooting

During my install, once I was done, I got the following message:

Permission denied @ rb_sysopen - /var/canvas/config/cache_store.yml (Errno::EACCES)

It appears that the update restart the file permission for /var/canvas/config.ru back to the installation user I was running as, rather than the user canvas runs as. As such, I had to run:

~/var/canvas$ sudo chown canvasuser ./config.ru