7.9.6 to 8.0.12

I’m looking at upgrading my install of ignition over the upcoming weekend. My install is on a VM, and I can spin up a second VM for testing and/or upgrade target if needed. I was considering rebuilding the VM anyway to update the OS (ubuntu right now, 14.04.6, so it’s a little behind the times.)

I’m looking for guidance on whether it’s best upgrade a running 7.9 server to 8.0, or if it’s best to install a blank 8.0 server and restore a 7.9 backup. I’m not sure if there is a functional difference. I suppose I could even install 7.9.6 on a fresh VM, restore a gateway backup then upgrade that to 8.0.12 if upgrading is the preferred path.

I don’t think I’ll be able to run both instances at once. I have some devices behind a serial gateway (not modbus gateway, actual serial gateway) that I think will not behave properly if two hosts start trying to request data. Other devices are more modern modbus gateways that I think would be able to keep conversations sorted between multiple hosts. Over the weekend, I’ll have a chance to stop the old gateway and test out version 8 in some fashion. Either snapshot the VM and do an in-place upgrade, or enable comms on a separate VM. Hopefully I’ll have time to sort any issues that pop up before production resumes.

Well, I spun up a new VM, installed the latest stable ignition version, got the gateway up and running, and tried to restore a gateway backup from my old server (downloaded today, the old server is still running). My v8 ignition gateway is now faulted :laughing:

Looks like the relevant line in the wrapper.log file is:

INFO   | jvm 2    | 2020/05/23 19:25:52 | simpleorm.utils.SException$Validation: Param too long (>-1) for field [F TagEventScriptRecord.Script] and value

After that, the wrapper has the contents of a fairly long tag change script that I use to talk to some old process controllers that don’t support modbus. They are also critical controllers, so I’ll still need to talk to them. I do have a fair amount of comments in the tag change scripts.

What is the limit on the size? I might be able to pare it down by removing the comments, but if I need to restructure, that will take a little more thinking. It’d be nice to have a target to shoot for instead of try, fail, repeat.

If someone at IA would like to have look at a copy of the backup, I can provide it.

http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/bug-7-gateway-restore-to-8-fails/31600

Looks like I’m not the first to hit this bug. @Tim, did you find a limit to stay under to successfully import the gateway backup?

If you can upload your backup somewhere and send a link to support that would help.

I submitted a ticket and attached the gateway backup and wrapper.log file. I think they successfully attached. Ticket #122253.