2.4. Open edX Ironwood Release

This section describes how to install the Open edX Ironwood release.

2.4.1. What’s Included in Ironwood

The Open edX Ironwood release contains several new features for learners, course teams, and developers. For more information, see the Open edX Release Notes.

2.4.2. What Is the Ironwood Git Tag?

A git tag identifies the version of Open edX code that is the Ironwood release. About two dozen repositories are tagged as part of an Open edX release. Many other repositories are installed as dependencies of those repositories. You can find the most up-to-date git tag for Ironwood on the Open edX Named Releases page.

2.4.3. Installing the Ironwood Release

You can install the Open edX Ironwood release using either devstack or the Legacy Open edX Native Installation instructions.

Ironwood releases have git tag names like open-release/ironwood.1. The available names are detailed on the Open edX Named Releases page.

2.4.4. Upgrading from the Hawthorn Release

The recommended approach to upgrading an existing installation of the Open edX Hawthorn release to the Ironwood release is to make a fresh installation of the Ironwood release on a new machine, and move your data and settings to it.

To move and upgrade your Hawthorn data onto a Ironwood installation, follow these steps.

  1. Be sure that your Hawthorn installation is on the latest open-release/hawthorn.master. This ensures that your database is fully migrated and ready for upgrade to Ironwood.

  2. Stop all services on the Hawthorn machine.

  3. Dump the data on the Hawthorn machine. Here’s an example script that will dump the MySQL and Mongo databases into a single .tgz file. The script will prompt for the MySQL and Mongo passwords as needed.

    #!/bin/bash
    MYSQL_CONN="-uroot -p"
    echo "Reading MySQL database names..."
    mysql ${MYSQL_CONN} -ANe "SELECT schema_name FROM information_schema.schemata WHERE schema_name NOT IN ('mysql','information_schema','performance_schema', 'sys')" > /tmp/db.txt
    DBS="--databases $(cat /tmp/db.txt)"
    NOW="$(date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S)"
    SQL_FILE="mysql-data-${NOW}.sql"
    echo "Dumping MySQL structures..."
    mysqldump ${MYSQL_CONN} --add-drop-database --skip-add-drop-table --no-data ${DBS} > ${SQL_FILE}
    echo "Dumping MySQL data..."
    # If there is table data you don't need, add --ignore-table=tablename
    mysqldump ${MYSQL_CONN} --no-create-info ${DBS} >> ${SQL_FILE}
    
    for db in edxapp cs_comments_service; do
        echo "Dumping Mongo db ${db}..."
        mongodump -u admin -p -h localhost --authenticationDatabase admin -d ${db} --out mongo-dump-${NOW}
    done
    
    tar -czf openedx-data-${NOW}.tgz ${SQL_FILE} mongo-dump-${NOW}
    
  4. Copy the .tgz data file to the Ironwood machine.

  5. Stop all services on the Ironwood machine.

  6. Restore the Hawthorn data into the Ironwood machine. As an example, you might use the following commands.

    $ tar -xvf openedx-data-20170811T154750.tgz
    $ mysql -uroot -p < mysql-data-20170811T154750.sql
    $ mongorestore -u admin -p -h localhost --authenticationDatabase admin --drop -d edxapp mongo-dump-20170811T154750/edxapp
    $ mongorestore -u admin -p -h localhost --authenticationDatabase admin --drop -d cs_comment_service mongo-dump-20170811T154750/cs_comment_service_development
    
  7. To migrate data from Hawthorn to Ironwood, you need to drop the database tables used by djcelery. These tables should be empty in your Hawthorn data, so it is safe to drop them. The edx-platform application has a management command to check that they are empty and drop them:

    $ sudo su - -s /bin/bash edxapp
    edxapp@xyz:~$ . edxapp_env
    edxapp@xyz:~$ cd edx-platform/
    edxapp@xyz:~/edx-platform$ python manage.py lms drop_djcelery_tables --settings=aws
    
  8. Run the Ironwood migrations, which will update your Hawthorn data to be valid for Ironwood:

    $ /edx/app/edx_ansible/edx_ansible/util/install/native.sh --tags migrate
    
  9. Copy your configuration files from the Hawthorn machine to the Ironwood

    machine.

  10. Restart all services.

2.4.5. Upgrading to a Subsequent Ironwood Release

Occasionally, we release updates to Ironwood. For example, the second release of Ironwood will be open-release/ironwood.2. The steps to upgrade differ based on your original installation method.

2.4.5.1. Upgrading a Docker Installation

Devstack is installed using Docker. To upgrade from one Ironwood release to another, follow the instructions in devstack.

2.4.5.2. Upgrading a Native Installation

If you installed Open edX using the Legacy Open edX Native Installation, you can upgrade from one Ironwood release to another by re-running those steps using your desired Ironwood tag as the new value for OPENEDX_RELEASE.