Upgrade to 2.6 a train wreck

Have users screaming that Spark is nagging them to upgrade.

Tried an upgrade as adminiistrator - stalls

Told to look in OpenFire for Client settings to do this automatically - Does not exist

Told the install the new version on each machine - The bundled JRE is corrupted

Lead to believe this is not a major upgrade (2.6 not 3.0)

How about a little testing in the field?

Tom

Hi

this is the first report like this. We are testing in my company on Win XP and everything works nicely. I am personally installing nightlies since 4 months as part of the development. Never had a corrupt JVM. We have several users running 2.6.0 on Mac. No issues either.

What OS are you using? Maybe your download is corrupt?

I am not aware about a setting in Spark that tells him to go to Openfire for settings. Where is that ? (I am runng OF/Spark since 2006 with 11000 users on multiple plattforms).

Walter

It is known that Spark can’t update from 2.5.8 to 2.6.0. Not known why. Suggest to turn off notifications about updates and do update manually.

Walter, he was probably told about Client Control plugin which lets an admin to put an installer of Spark for all users. One has to install this plugin to get such option. Not sure this will work with 2.5.8 to 2.6.0 update.

On the corrupted JRE i second Walter’s words. Haven’t seen such issue ever and i’m testing almost every build. And haven’t seen this with the 2.6.0 installer on the site. How does this corruption appears? Have you tried to redownload the installer. What happens if you delete the jre folder inside the Spark installation folder and install standalone jre?

Hi, I am not aware about destructive issues, if we upgrade from 2.5.8 to 2.6.0. The profile is copied. Custom plugins may be an issue, but that’s not really suprising with a new version of Spark.

I have check a local installation 3.7.0 plus client control. It did update 2.5.8. to 2.6.1 nightly. The nightly accepted the bookmarks. Blocking of Spark works. Blocking of VCARD changes works.

Wroot: Can you create issues for the stuff you are aware about and mark them as blockers for 2.6.1. Assign them to me please.

Tom: Can you please report more details?

What i meant is that 2.5.8 can notify you about the newer version (2.6.0 in our case), but it can’t update automatically. With older versions you could press update and it would download and launch the installer itself. Now it just don’t do anything. I think something has been changed on the server (file structure, jsp code, web server settings) and 2.5.8 sees that there is a newer version on the site, but just can’t download it, can’t find it. After all it was 3 years ago, when 2.5.8 was released, so probably there were some changes in the site under the hood.

Personally i think we should drop that feature in 2.6.x. First, it doesn’t do delta updates and downloads the whole installer. Well, a user doesn’t have to go to a site and download the installer manually. But as we can’t guarantee this feature is working all the time, i see no point in having it and confusing users. Second, this is not working in corporate environment where users have limited rights and just creates an additional confusion. Actually as an admin i always have to search how to turn off update notifications in various applications (Adobe Reader, Flash Player, etc.) to stop annoying the users. Client Control plugin doesn’t help in this area either. By dropping this feature we will of course brake this plugin’s functionality, as it relays on the Spark ability to download newer installer (in this case admin controls which installer should be downloaded). But as i said, this only works in the environment where everybody has admin rights and personally i think no real corporate environment allows this.

We can leave that feature just for the information purpose. It can only inform a user, that a new version is available and suggest to go to site and download a new version, maybe even adding a link to Downloads section in that dialog.

This is just my proposition. Personally i have no use of this feature.

Walter, nothing is broken in 2.6.0 or 2.6.1 or in Client Control plugin. As you said, you were able to update from 2.5.8 to 2.6.1 via Client Control plugin? So it works in this scenario, but it doesn’t work when Spark has to download newer installer from the site. So when we release 2.6.1 version, all 2.6.0 users will have the same problem. A fix for this would be dropping of automatic update or check the code in the Spark and fix the download link or something like that. But this would be hard to test as you have to put an installer with higher version number on the site to be able to test this. Not a good idea.

Tom,

are your users complaining, because 2.5.8 is reporting a newer version 2.6.0 after pressing the menue “Help”->“Check for updates” ?

This is an issue for sure. Spark 2.5.8 knows about the structure of the web site an recognized the new version that is posted on the site.

Walter Ebeling wrote:

Tom,

are your users complaining, because 2.5.8 is reporting a newer version 2.6.0 after pressing the menue “Help”->“Check for updates” ?

Actually, if you set “Check for updates” in the preferences, Spark will check automatically.