Updating MX to new version: Difference between revisions

=Who is not intended reader=

# Download the release distribution zip for the next build (see later for where from)

#* My advice is to have a separate download location away from the location where you are installing/running the software; it can retain older releases to make regression simple if the new release proves to have a bug.

<pre>/tmp/CumulusMXDist</pre> and hit the TAB Button

5. Follow the on screen instructions

<pre> /home/pi/CumulusMX/cumulusmx.sh -s</pre>

*for some weather station types readings taken every minute, or more frequently, are replaced by whatever period you station data logger records at;  

*for other stations, without their own logging, all data is lost for the period when MX is not running.

* you will see in the Cumulus Support Forum that many builds have bugs, and so you realise that it is better to stick with your fully working release, than install one with bugs;

* you may wish to avoid the loss of data mentioned above, by minimising the number of times that you stop MX;

* you may just have more important ways to use your time than updating your MX software, and some new builds might not give you any benefits that make it worthwhile to change your priorities.

===Advice about skipping versions===

Please see [[Updating_MX_to_new_version#Updating_from_a_very_old_version]] sub-section later on this page (and preceding sub-sections where relevant)

= What to read (and when) before upgrading =

***That may mean you are advised to regress to an earlier version and use that

***It might mean that some supporting files in current version are wrong, and you only need to regress those named files

***Finally you might be given advice to avoid using certain parts of the functionality or take some other action until the next release is available.

You can also view the latest [https://github.com/cumulusmx/CumulusMX/blob/master/Updates.txt Updates.txt].

This has been covered earlier in this article, but I repeat here 2 critical considerations:

*Basically, check the corresponding release announcements for every version since the one you have been using before planning your upgrade.  

**Make a note of any one-off actions required at particular in-between versions, remember these actions are only in forum release announcements.

*It is still worth reading all the points made above for updating from immediately preceding build.

====If using 3.0.0 (the MX original beta)====

This gives you essential new functionality in the admin interface like editors for the log files and extreme records. But it also fixes multiple bugs in the beta you were using and adds some useful validation missing in the beta.

====If using a 3.5.x release ====

You should skip the intermediate releases because several 3.6.y releases have bugs in them, and you want to avoid those problems (the bugs vary in severity between mistakes in calculations done by MX to particular functionality not working).

#... MX is running with connection to the internet, AND

#...you restart MX

<pre>

2020-05-27 04:18:48.326 Calculating sunrise and sunset times

== Back-ups ==

== The two approaches ==

On my site, my own versions of interface files have a "_" (underline character) added to the start of the standard MX file name. This applies to both HTML pages, and JavaScript files that I have edited. I edit the menu items within my edited pages so those all go to my versions where I have a HTML customised page, leaving unchanged the menu items that can still go to a standard MX web page where I don't have my own version of the .HTML page.  This makes it easy for me to navigate between my pages, as all of them link to my other pages.  If I am on a standard MX page and want to go to one of my customised pages, I select the equivalent standard page, then edit the URL to add the underline and get easily to my page.  This naming means I can always use a standard page instead of my customised page when I need to, and I never miss out on any new features.

If you do not use the example web template files, provided as standard, with a MX release, the remainder of this section can be ignored.

**'''steelseries''' - this folder has 3 sub-folders, I can only think of 2 MX releases when anything was changed here, and I don't anticipate any further changes.

Start the new installation of MX and watch out for any errors - If the device you run MX on has a monitor, then look in the terminal/command window. In all cases look at the latest file in the [[MXdiags_folder|MXdiags folder]] to see if any errors are reported.