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bholub's avatar

Upgrading Ubuntu on Forge

I upgraded my server to Ubuntu 22.04 and it seems like Forge is confused about PHP versions now available (maybe other things too I dunno). Forge UI lists my PHP Versions as 8.0 and 7.4 still, though it seems after upgrading Ubuntu I have only PHP 8.1. I'm able to manually update sites to point at 8.1, but I can't install PHP 8.2 via Forge.

Is there a way to "reset" or "resync" forge with my server?

Thanks!

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6 replies
bholub's avatar

I'm assuming the answer is probably no, since I found this in the docs: Manual PHP Installations "If you choose to manually install PHP versions on your server, Forge will not be aware of those PHP installations. Forge is only aware of PHP installations that are managed through the Forge dashboard."

That said, after adding the php repo back via ssh (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php), I was able to install PHP 8.2 via Forge... good enough for now.

jimpannell's avatar

Thanks for posting this.

I'm interested in knowing if there's an officially recognised method for upgrading an Ubuntu server that is controlled by Forge.

Or is it easier to simply get a new server up and running and migrate your site to the new server?

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babul's avatar

Definitely easier to get a new server up and running and redeploy. It's maintenance I do every year or two.

Roni's avatar

Something to consider for production web properties, if you don't have a service that allows you to preserve your IP's for example DO :( start off by getting a reserved IP and assigning it to your project, as you roll over droplets, you can maintain a continuous IP. Switching IP's can be problematic as we as cause SEO damage, especially if you get something that has been abused.

Tray2's avatar

@Roni Did you really post this in the correct thread?

Roni's avatar

@Tray2 Yeah, it might not seem that way at first glance but consider, this discussion is aimed at a specific target.

  1. People who have sites that are bringing in real revenue and experience organic growth
  2. People upgrading their machine at forge who have had them there for so long it they are losing some connectivity or aging of upgradability/maintainability.
  3. People that don't want to run all the details of their own servers or are working on a team without devops.

If you fall into those categories upgrading where losing your IP will financially cause you pain, especially if you roll into something with a banned or spam history. So in the interest of passing on some things I wish I had known or run across when I first experienced problems like this, thought I'd leave something behind so people know there are a couple of solutions.

  1. People starting out a paying long term project, you can reserve an IP or a pool of them if your provider lets you, they are cheap, normally pre-cleaned so you wont have many de-listing issues and you can assign them to your forge servers like a poor mans load balancer.

  2. If you have an old forge server rather than upgrading it piecemeal you can set aside a certain planned migration window and completely rebuild your server. You can accomplish this by running a rebuild process instead of a create and destroy process at your host. This will leave you will a new clean install with the OS of your choice. Handing that to Laravel forge will allow it to re-provision your project on the same machine with a full controlled upgrade. The downside is that planned downtime.

Here is a link for digital ocean's rebuild https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/rebuild/#rebuilding-a-droplet-with-the-control-panel

and forges custom VPS https://forge.laravel.com/docs/servers/providers.html#bring-your-own-server

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