Upgrade 8.3 to 8.4

[bscal]

Talking to Cognos they said not to unistall 8.3 and than install 8.4 over the old 8.3 because it can come up with config error.  They said to install 8.4 in another directory.  Has anybody done an upgrade from 8.3 to 8.4 laying the new version over the old?

[ducthcogtechie]

The 8.3 uninstall should not touch any file with a newer timestamp then the 8.3 install media.
Did you get the advise from Cognos support?

Basicly you can rebuilt a C8 install easily by:

- Backing up the content store on DB level, and by creating a C8 full content store export. (and saving the .zip somewhere else)
- Backing up the config by exporting Cognos configuration to an unencrypted xml format (and saving the .xml somewhere else)
- Backing up the modified xml files. (i usually copy the complete C8 folder to a backup location just in case).

From there on you can try any scenerio you feel comfortable with:
- Clean install in new folder.
- Upgrade directly over 8.3 (not advised)
- Uninstall 8.3 and install 8.4 in same folder. (my favorite)

[UseCog]

I second the thoughts from the above person.

We have upgraded our production environment from 8.1 to 8.4 with minimal issues.

[kolonell]

yes , I agree. I guess the point Support is trying to make is to not touch your 8.3 until you have succesfully
moved on to 8.4 in case something goes terribly wrong. But hey, backups should be made anyway ;-)

[bscal]

Thanks for the info.  I agree with you but the Cognos tech said an error comes up when you do this.  I pasted the error below

616504 - [UPG] configuration upgrade 8.3 to 8.4 fails with decrypt the current configuration step

[ducthcogtechie]

8.3 uses java 1.4.2, and 8.4 uses 1.5.

- Export cognos configuration.
- Uninstall 8.3
- Rename all C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\configuration\cogstartup*_*.xml to .old
- Install 8.4 (at the end do not start cognos configuration.
- Rename C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\configuration\cogstartup.xml to .org
- Restore you cognos confiiguration export to C:\Program Files\Cognos\c8\configuration\cogstartup.xml
- Start Cogos configuration and start the service.

To be 300% sure, make screenshots of all major setttings in 8.3 Cogos configuration before starting.

[kolonell]

I'll have to agree with dutchcogtechie on this one. If the issue is decryption that fails then just decrypt it before proceeding with the upgrade.

[bscal]

Thanks I will let you know the outcome.

[bscal]

I am doing a separate install of 8.4 in a different directory than 8.3 on my production box.  The install goes fine but when I try to access the Admin tool I get the below error

DPR-ERR-2022

      No response generated. This may be due to an incorrect configuration, a damaged installation, or because the dispatcher did not finish initializing.

     Details
Handler trace back: [the_dispatcher] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.performance.PerformanceIndicationHandler [the_dispatcher] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [service_lookup] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.engine.ServiceLookupHandler [load_balancer] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [lb_forwarder] com.cognos.p2plb.clerver.LoadBalanceHandler [cogadminChainHandler] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [respond] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [writeOutput] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.core.DoResponseHandler