Overview - Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat)

This Release Note covers all point releases for Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) that are offered by eApps. Upgrade instructions are included.

Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) is only available for Virtual Servers running CentOS 6 or CentOS 7. If you are on a CentOS 5 (Webmin) or CentOS 4 (VPS) plan and need Liferay Portal, you will need to migrate to a CentOS 6 or CentOS 7 plan. Contact eApps Sales for more information.

Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) is a major release of Liferay Portal. This release has introduced new functionality and significant changes to the existing Liferay Portal. If you are upgrading from any prior version of Liferay Portal to Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat), there is a HIGH RISK of data loss and downtime if you do not carefully test your existing database and application with this new version.

eApps recommends, as a best practice, to maintain a staging server where you can test software upgrades before moving them into production. This approach will allow you to minimize the risk of data loss and downtime of your production service when performing software upgrades. If necessary, you can rebuild your staging Virtual Server on demand so that you have a fresh installation to test on. If you need more information about setting up a Virtual Server for staging or testing, please contact eApps Sales.

IMPORTANT: Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) has an extensive list of new features and changes. See the Official Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) Release Notes for the version of Liferay that you are upgrading to for the most current information.

eApps Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.5 GA6 (with Tomcat)
eApps Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.2 GA3 (with Tomcat)
eApps Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.1 GA2 (with Tomcat)
eApps Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.0 GA1 (with Tomcat)

How to Upgrade

Highlighted Features and Fixes in Liferay Portal 6.2.5 GA6 (with Tomcat)

Features

• Tomcat is upgraded to 7.0.62
• Web content admin is now SPA-enabled
• Improved copy/paste from MS Word

Fixes

• Fixed an issue with Sync from the GA5 release

All known security vulnerabilities from the previous version are fixed - Known Vulnerabilities

There are around 450 fixes from the previous version. A list of all fixes in this version is here - Current fixes

• Performance and memory efficiency improvements
• Smarter upgrade for DB plugins

The Official Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.5 GA6 (with Tomcat) are available here - http://issues.liferay.com/6.2.0/ReleaseNotes (find the current stable release of Liferay Portal 6.2 CE GA6 and click to expand the Release Details)

Highlighted Features and Fixes in Liferay Portal 6.2.2 GA3 (with Tomcat)

Features

Liferay Portal 6.2.2 GA3 (with Tomcat) is a bug fix and security release, no new major features have been added.

Fixes

There are over 800 fixes in this version of Liferay Portal. A list of all the fixes in this version is here - Current fixes.

• Fix for copy/paste image from desktop only working in Firefox
• Nested templates are now working in WCM
• Layout templates now preserved with copying a page

The Official Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.2 GA3 (with Tomcat) are available here - http://issues.liferay.com/6.2.0/ReleaseNotes (Look under Past (Legacy) Releases for Liferay Portal 6.2 CE GA3 and click to expand the Release Details)

Highlighted Features and Fixes in Liferay Portal 6.2.1 GA2 (with Tomcat)

Features

Liferay Portal 6.2.1 GA2 (with Tomcat) is a bug fix and security release, no new major features have been added.

Fixes

• All known security vulnerabilities since Liferay Portal 6.2.0 GA1 (with Tomcat) have been fixed - Known Vulnerabilities
• Many cosmetic UI fixes
• Improved message board navigation for mobile

The Official Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.1 GA2 (with Tomcat) are available here - http://issues.liferay.com/6.2.0/ReleaseNotes (Look under Past (Legacy) Releases for Liferay Portal 6.2 CE GA2 and click to expand the Release Details)

Highlighted Features and Fixes in Liferay Portal 6.2.0 GA1 (with Tomcat)

Features

• Improved mobile device support
• Localization improvements with location-friendly URLs
• Completely new calendar application

Fixes

• New field types for dynamic lists and web forms
• API fixes and clean up
• log4J updated to 1.2.17

The Official Release Notes for Liferay Portal 6.2.0 GA1 (with Tomcat) are available here - http://issues.liferay.com/6.2.0/ReleaseNotes (Look under Past (Legacy) Releases for Liferay Portal 6.2 CE GA1 and click to expand the Release Details)

How to upgrade

Before upgrading Liferay, it is strongly advised that you read and understand the official Liferay documentation related to upgrading the application and your plugins. Failure to fully read and understand this documentation will likely result in a failed upgrade and data loss - http://www.liferay.com/documentation/liferay-portal/6.2/user-guide/-/ai/upgrading-liferay-liferay-portal-6-2-user-guide-18-en

The Liferay upgrade installs a brand new version of the software - this is not an incremental update, but a full update. This is why it is imperative that you read the official Liferay documentation to fully understand the upgrade process.

Before upgrading Liferay Portal (with Tomcat), make a backup of your database. See the MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL User Guides for more information.

You should also make a backup of your application, your configuration, and any tunings or changes you have made. If you do not have current backups and something goes wrong during the upgrade process, you could have data loss.

When the upgrade completes, you will need to install any plugins you were using in your old version of Liferay. Please note that you cannot reinstall your existing plugins, you will need to find and install versions of those plugins that are designed for Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat). If you have created your own plugins, your developers will have to migrate the codebase in those plugins to be compatible with Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat), and provide you with the .war files.

Liferay Portal 6.2 (with Tomcat) now supports Java SE 7. You can also use Java SE 6 if this is what is supported by your code base.

To upgrade Liferay Portal (with Tomcat), you will need to work from the command line using SSH, and you will need to be able to work as the root user. You will need to use yum to upgrade the application, and then copy your existing data directory and portal-ext.properties file into the new version. Once the upgrade is complete, you will also be forced to change your admin password when you first try to access Liferay.

Upgrading Liferay Portal (with Tomcat)

Once you are logged in to the VS using SSH, change to the /opt directory, and do the following - yum update liferay-portal-tomcat. This will upgrade the application. Due to the size of the upgrade (over 200 MB), it can take several minutes for the upgrade to complete.

[root@eapps-example opt]# yum update liferay-portal-tomcat

Once the upgrade is completed, you will see several directories in /opt. Which directories you see will depend on which version of Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) that you are upgrading from.

If you are upgrading from a version of the software older than version 6.1.0, you will have the following directories in /opt:

[root@eapps-example opt]# ll
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 9 lportal lportal 4096 May  2 14:19 liferay-portal-tomcat
drwxrwx--- 6     496     496 4096 Nov 29 16:31 liferay-portal-tomcat-data-pre-6.2.2-upgrade
drwxr-xr-x 9     496     496 4096 Nov 29 16:26 liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade
[root@eapps-example opt]#

The first directory - liferay-portal-tomcat, is the new version of the application. The liferay-portal-tomcat-data-pre-6.2.2-upgrade directory is your data directory from your previous version, and the liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade directory contains all the files from your previous version of Liferay.

If you are upgrading from version 6.1.0 or newer to 6.2.2, you will have the following directories in /opt:

[root@eapps-example opt]# ll
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 9 lportal lportal 4096 Oct  2 14:19 liferay-portal-tomcat
drwxr-xr-x 9     496     496 4096 Sep 29 16:26 liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade
[root@eapps-example opt]#

The first directory - liferay-portal-tomcat, is the new version of the application. The liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade directory contains all the files from your previous version of Liferay, including your data directory and your portal-ext.properties file.

Stop Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) and copy the data directory and the portal-ext.properties file

Once the upgrade is complete, you will need to stop the Liferay service, and then copy your existing data directory into your new version. The location of your data directory will differ, based on which version of Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) you upgraded from.

• For CentOS 6, use the service liferay-portal-tomcat stop command:

  [root@eapps-example ~]# service liferay-portal-tomcat stop

• For CentOS 7, use the systemctl stop liferay-portal-tomcat command:

  [root@eapps-example ~]# systemctl stop liferay-portal-tomcat

Then make a backup of the new data directory and the portal-ext.properties file in the liferay-portal-tomcat directory.

[root@eapps-example opt]# mv liferay-portal-tomcat/data/ liferay-portal-tomcat/data.bck
[root@eapps-example opt]# mv liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties.bck
[root@eapps-example opt]#

Upgrading from Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) older than version 6.1.0:

Copy the liferay-portal-tomcat-data-pre-6.2.2-upgrade directory into the liferay-portal-tomcat directory, renaming it data.

Note that the cp -R command is used - this does a recursive copy, which copies all the files and directories.

Once you have copied your existing data directory to the new liferay-portal-tomcat/data directory, you may need to change the owner and group to lportal, using the chown -R lportal:lportal command.

[root@eapps-example opt]# cp -R liferay-portal-tomcat-data-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/ liferay-portal-tomcat/data
[root@eapps-example opt]# chown -R lportal:lportal liferay-portal-tomcat/data

After copying the data directory, you will need to also copy the existing portal-ext.properties file to the new Liferay installation. The existing portal-ext.properties file is located at /opt/liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties, and needs to be copied to the /opt/liferay-portal-tomcat directory, where it will overwrite the new portal-ext.properties file that was created during the upgrade.

You may also need to change the owner and group to lportal once the file is in place.

Depending on the width of your browser, the copy command may wrap. The full command is:

cp liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties

[root@eapps-example opt]# cp liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties
[root@eapps-example opt]# chown lportal:lportal liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties
[root@eapps-example opt]#

Upgrading from Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) version 6.1.0 or newer to 6.2.2

Copy the data directory in the liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade directory into the liferay-portal-tomcat directory, renaming it data.

Note that the cp -R command is used - this does a recursive copy, which copies all the files and directories.

Once you have copied your existing data directory to the new liferay-portal-tomcat/data directory, you may need to change the owner and group to lportal, using the chown -R lportal:lportal command.

[root@eapps-example opt]# cp -R liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/data liferay-portal-tomcat/data
[root@eapps-example opt]# chown -R lportal:lportal liferay-portal-tomcat/data

After copying the data directory, you will need to also copy the existing portal-ext.properties file to the new Liferay installation. The existing portal-ext.properties file is located at /opt/liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/portal-ext.properties, and needs to be copied to the /opt/liferay-portal-tomcat directory, where it will overwrite the new portal-ext.properties file that was created during the upgrade.

You may also need to change the owner and group to lportal once the file is in place.

Depending on the width of your browser, the copy command may wrap. The full command is:

cp liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/portal-ext.properties liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties

[root@eapps-example opt]# cp liferay-portal-tomcat-pre-6.2.2-upgrade/portal-ext.properties liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties
[root@eapps-example opt]# chown lportal:lportal liferay-portal-tomcat/portal-ext.properties
[root@eapps-example opt]#

Restarting Liferay

Once you have copied the portal-ext.properties file, you can restart Liferay.

Be aware that while the service will start fairly quickly, it will be several minutes (possibly up to 10 minutes, depending on the size of your database) before the Liferay portal will be available. This is because all your data and the database have to be loaded into Liferay, and the final steps of the upgrade have to be processed.

• For CentOS 6, use the service liferay-portal-tomcat restart command:

  [root@eapps-example ~]# service liferay-portal-tomcat stop

• For CentOS 7, use the systemctl restart liferay-portal-tomcat command:

  [root@eapps-example ~]# systemctl stop liferay-portal-tomcat

To see the progress, look at the log file in liferay-portal-tomcat/logs. The log files will be named liferay.YYYY-MM-DD.log

To finish the upgrade, see the Liferay Portal post-upgrade configuration section of this User Guide.

Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) post-upgrade configuration

These screenshots show the default Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) configuration. If you have made changes to your theme or settings, your screens may look different. The general steps will be the same, though.

Once the Liferay service is started, go to the Portal in your browser. By default, this is http://eapps-example.com:8080 (substitute your domain name for eapps-example.com, or use your IP address)

The first screen lets you set the name of the Portal, and also the name and e-mail address of the administrative user. You can also see the status of the JDBC connection.

Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) Finish Configuration page

Click on Finish Configuration to continue.

This takes you to the next screen, where you can see that the configuration was successful.

Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) Configuration successful

Click on Go to My Portal to continue.

You will be forced to set a new password.

Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) Set new password

Once you have entered the new password, click on Save.

This will log you in to the Liferay Portal. This completes the Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) upgrade.

Liferay Portal (with Tomcat) main screen