I've built a check list for each time I upgrade Drupal, whether it's a simple (incremental) version upgrade (version 5.4 to 5.7) or a full version upgrade (from version 5 to version 6).

Upgrade

• Copy the drupal and module files to the web server.
• Unzip (using tar) the main drupal file.
• Unzip the modules.
• Configure the sites directory for each website.
• Log into the website with the Administrative account (Account #1)
• Disable all modules (/admin/build/modules)
• Put database in maintenance mode
• Backup database to flat file.
• Update apache configuration to point to new version (commenting out the old lines - by commenting them out, you can easily uncomment them if you have to do a recovery and comment out the newer version).
• Connect to the website url, adding update.php to the end (to start the update process).
• Follow on-screen prompts.
• Enable all modules
• If you're using WyzWig module, Go back and enable module "Tiny mce" (enabling WyzWig disables it for some reason)
• If you're using the node_permissions module, Run node_permissions module.
• Re-run update.php
• Configure the WyzWig Editor module (this seems to lose it's configuration with some upgrades, for some reason), and any other modules you need.
• If you've added or upgrade any modules, fix the role permissions (/admin/user/permissions)
• Take database out of maintenance mode.
• Verify as an anonymous user (by logging out) that the site looks the way you want and that the functionality works correctly.

Recovery

• Drop all tables in the database.
• Reload the backup into the correct database.
• Update apache to point to the correct directory (uncomment the old lines and comment the new lines).

You do NOT need to run this (I already did), but you might be interested in this SQL to shrink transaction logs. You do need to do a backup of the databases after you truncate them (I'm not concerned since these old databases are lookup only - no new data should be written to them).

USE MASTER
GO

BACKUP LOG
    file
WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
GO

USE db
GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE ( 'dbfile' )
GO
USE Master
GO

I used the following code to generate the list of files in the database.

SELECT 'SELECT name from ' + rtrim ( name ) + '..sysfiles'
FROM sysdatabases
WHERE name LIKE 'dbfile%'
ORDER BY name

Don't forget to back-up the database once you're finished as well. A FULL database backup should be done!

Sometimes you want to be able to quickly search the contents of some files for a command or some other piece of text. The following command (for Cygwin obviously) will work:

for i in `find /cygdrive/c/Devel/SQL/ | grep sql`; do echo $i; grep cursor $i; done;

For regular linux, the command would be:

for i in `find ~/devel/sql/ | grep sql `; do echo $i; grep 'cursor' $i; done;

Both of these commands search for the word cursor in the SQL files.

Download the QEMU program (from http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/) and install it into a directory on Windows. I use C:\QEMU.

# Verify that C:\QEMU is in the path

# Create a "base" directory to handle all your Virutal Machines. In my case, I selected C:\Virtual. I also create a subdirectory for each virtual machine I'm going to build.

# Create a base directory for the ISO images (CD-ROM images). You'll need this path for the batch file.

# Create a batch file (.CMD extension) to launch your virtual machine. Below is my batch file (AKA, a script) to launch Damn Small Linux (DSL) version 1.5.

Here are some links with additional information on VMware and virutalization.

Virtual Infrastructure articles and sites:

http://www.vmware.com http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vmworld/ http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/blog/ http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/blog/sherrod/ http://vmware.itst.org/ http://www.vmguru.com/ http://www.run-virtual.com/ http://trivore.com/vmware/ http://tihlde.org/~larstr/vmktree/ http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/ http://www.vmts.net/ http://blogs.technet.com/megand/default.aspx http://sanbarrow.com/index.html http://www.roudybob.net/ http://www.redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1220 http://www.vmwareprofessional.com/ http://www.platespin.com/spinblog/ http://www.jsequeira.com/cgi-bin/virtualization/BrowseFacets http://www.virtual-machines.nl/vm/index.php?option=com_content&task=cate...§ionid=5&id=2&Itemid=20&limit=25&limitstart=0 http://about-virtualization.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=... http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/1328/1/2/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1734537766;fp;2;fpid;2 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/oct05/10-10virtualizati... http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-10VirtualizationS... http://www.cio.in/esntech/viewArticle/ARTICLEID=569

Here are some links with additional information on VMware and virutalization.

Virtual Infrastructure articles and sites:

http://www.vmware.com http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vmworld/ http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/blog/ http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/blog/sherrod/ http://vmware.itst.org/ http://www.vmguru.com/ http://www.run-virtual.com/ http://trivore.com/vmware/ http://tihlde.org/~larstr/vmktree/ http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/ http://www.vmts.net/ http://blogs.technet.com/megand/default.aspx http://sanbarrow.com/index.html http://www.roudybob.net/ http://www.redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1220 http://www.vmwareprofessional.com/ http://www.platespin.com/spinblog/ http://www.jsequeira.com/cgi-bin/virtualization/BrowseFacets http://www.virtual-machines.nl/vm/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=category§ionid=5&amp;id=2&amp;Itemid=20&amp;limit=25&amp;limitstart=0 http://about-virtualization.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=blogcategory&amp;id=0&amp;Itemid=11 http://www.virtual-strategy.com/article/articleview/1328/1/2/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1734537766;fp;2;fpid;2 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/oct05/10-10virtualizationlicensing.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-10VirtualizationStrategyPR.mspx http://www.cio.in/esntech/viewArticle/ARTICLEID=569</span></span></p>

Connect to the system and modify the computer properties (right-click on My Computer and choose Properties).

Under the Remote tab, enable Allow Remote Assistance.

Apply the settings and disconnect.

Have the user needing to share the local console do the following:

Click on Start > Help and Support.

Look for the heading called Support on the right side of the window and click on the Remote Assistance link under the heading.

Choose to Invite a user to share your session.

At the bottom of the support window, click on "Save invite as a file" rather than using Windows Messenger or email.

Choose not to set a connection password (unless you feel it is necessary).

Save the file to a folder where the person needing to shadow the active session can find it.

The file may now be clicked on (opened) and will initiate a connection to an active local console session.

The user at the local console will need to accept the incoming connection. The new session will now open an RDP session that is controlled by the desktop user through an interface that is similar to the Netmeeting interface of old.

Remember that if you are the user connecting to the local console and you are doing so through Remote Desktop Client and connecting to servers, you will need to connect using the "/console" command option which is added to the end of the target string. For Remote Desktop Client running on Windows 2000 Professional, you will need to be careful to set the quotation marks around the path and executable, but place the command option outside the quotes.

The Windows File Explorer, sometimes just called File Explorer, doesn't work or doesn't work as expected. This could be a patch that didn't fully install or some other problem with Microsoft Windows. I've found that you can use (at least some versions of) Internet Explorer, in some cases, to browse files on your computer.

One way to do this is to use the command line (if you can run cmd.exe or powershell.exe) like the following: %program files%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -e -root C:\.

You can pass in alternate directories as well, like your Documents folder using %program files%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -e -root %USERPROFILE%. This works since the %USERPROFILE% variable is set by Windows when you log in to Windows by entering your username and password.

The following SQL will highlight some problems with Unicode under SQL Server.

DECLARE @nstring nchar(12)
SET @nstring = N'?'
SELECT UNICODE(@nstring), NCHAR(UNICODE(@nstring))
SELECT @nstring
DECLARE @nstring2 char(12)
SET @nstring2 = '?'
SELECT ASCII(@nstring2), UNICODE(@nstring2), NCHAR(UNICODE(@nstring2))
SELECT @nstring2

Also, Unicode, especially on Microsoft Windows, is NOT the same thing as UTF-8.

Sometimes, on a high-volume / high TPS database, I want to make sure I've made updates to ALL the recovers, and not leave some orphaned data out there. This usually occurs because someone has a locked record while they're making a change. So when I'm making updates to multiple records (remember, SQL is SET based, so it applies to all records that match a condition), I use a belt and suspenders approach.

I verify the number of records that are going to be updated from the new value to the old value both before and AFTER I make the change. If I'm updating a set of users that are going to be changed from "Admin" to "SysAdmin", the code would look like the following:

BEGIN TRANSACTION
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'admin' FROM Users WHERE level = 'admin'
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'sysadmin' FROM Users WHERE level = 'sysadmin'
UPDATE Users SET level = 'sysadmin' where level='admin'
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'admin' FROM Users WHERE level = 'admin'
SELECT COUNT(*) AS 'sysadmin' FROM Users WHERE level = 'sysadmin'

-- COMMIT
-- ROLLBACK

It should return something like the following:

admin
-----------
23

sysadmin
---------------
5

*Data Updated....*

admin
-----------
0

sysadmin
---------------
28

If all the numbers match up, I can highlight and execute the COMMIT statement that is commented out. If the numbers DO NOT MATCH I can execute the ROLLBACK statement to safely undo my work.