I upgraded to drupal 5.5 this morning.

Step 1: Install fresh Drupal 5.5

From /var/www/html i downloaded the 5.5 source and untarred drupal-5.5.tar.gz I moved the ./www4/ directory to ./www4_pre5.5, and then moved drupal-5.5 to www4

Step 2: Copy files from www3_5.5 to www4

After going through the prep for 5.5, I have all the sites/ directories set up with new database names, etc. so I did

cd /var/www/html/www3_5.5
tar cf - files File cositsupport.html favicon.ico sas_files | 
   ( cd ../www4 ; tar xf - )

cd sites
tar cf - all www4.cos.gmu.edu cos.gmu.edu sas.cos.gmu.edu 
  www3.cos.gmu.edu science.society.gmu.edu |
  ( cd ../../www4/sites/ ; tar xf - )

cd /var/www/html/www4
ln -s . sas

I then made a directory in sites for www4.cos.gmu.edu and copied the cos.gmu.edu/settings.php into it. Next, I edited this file to change the $base_url.

Step 3: Test

I visited http://www4.cos.gmu.edu and verified that the site is working

Step 4: Run update.php

I logged in as admin and ran update.php. Nothing needed to be done, since there are no database changes from 5.3 to 5.5. I did find that cck_teaser_field and tagadelic had new module versions, so I updated them.

Step 4: Go Live

cd /var/www/html/
mv www3 www3_5.3
mv www4 www3

Verify that the site is up. Check status - everything is OK

Step 5: Check science and society

I logged in to science.society.gmu.edu and verified that it is working. a database update was needed: when calendar was updated a while back, the database for sas_ was not updated, so I ran the update script.

Step 6: Back up new version

Return to /root and run fullsitebackup.sh and copy the files over to poseidon.cos.gmu.edu:/data2/website_backups/cos_www3/