upgrading from 4.1.8

Hey there,

I can't seem to find any good documentation online to help me upgrade on a W2k3 box MySQL 4.1.8 to the latest 5 version.

Any hints?

Cheers

The safest way to do this is simply do a full database dump (mysqldump utility) from the 4.1 version. Uninstall 4.1. Install 5.5. Run mysql < thedump.sql to rebuild everything.

If your DB is especially large, you might want to dump it by tables. One at at time or a few at a time. mysqldump --help will give you full list of options you can use.

I did this (several years ago now) and had no problems at all.

Thanks. I guess I could also test it by importing the dump on a fresh install on another box as well.

Absolutely the best thing to do if you can!

I figured the worst that could happen would be that I'd reinstall 4.1, because I didn't have another box, but neither did I have problems.

But if I'd had one, I sure would have done it your way.

FWIW I get the ZIP file of a new version and simply replace the current directory structure with the new one after unzipping the new version. I usually make a copy of the database directory just in case but, so far, have not had any issues with the "mass replace" approach.