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Upgrading

If your version of Dokku is pre 0.3.0 (check with dokku version), we recommend a fresh install on a new server.

Security Updates

For any security related updates, please follow our Twitter account. As Dokku does not run any daemons, the security risk introduced by our software is minimal.

Your operating system may occasionally provide security updates. We recommend setting unattended upgrades for your operating system. Here are some helpful links:

Docker releases updates periodically to their engine. We recommend reading their release notes and upgrading accordingly. Please see the Docker documentation for more details.

Finally, we provide a helpful binary called dokku-update. This is a recommended package that:

  • Can be installed separately, so upgrading Dokku will not affect the running of this package.
  • Automates many of the upgrade instructions for you.
  • Provides a clean way for us to further enhance the upgrade process in the future.

When installing from source, this is available from contrib/dokku-update, and is also available on Debian and RPM-based systems from our package repositories under the name dokku-update.

Migration Guides

Before upgrading, check the migration guides to get comfortable with new features and prepare your deployment to be upgraded.

0.5 Migration Guide

0.6 Migration Guide

0.7 Migration Guide

0.8 Migration Guide

0.9 Migration Guide

0.10 Migration Guide

Upgrade Instructions

If Dokku was installed via apt-get install dokku or bootstrap.sh (most common), upgrade with:

# update your local apt cache
sudo apt-get update

# stop each running app
# for 0.11.4 and newer versions, use
dokku ps:stopall
# for versions between 0.8.1 and 0.11.3, use
dokku --quiet apps:list | xargs -L1 dokku ps:stop
# for versions versions older than 0.8.1, use
dokku --quiet apps | xargs -L1 dokku ps:stop

# update dokku and its dependencies
sudo apt-get install -qq -y dokku herokuish sshcommand plugn

# rebuild all of your applications
dokku ps:rebuildall # rebuilds all applications

Info

If you have any applications deployed via the tags or tar commands, do not run the ps:rebuildall command, and instead trigger ps:rebuild manually for each git-deployed application:

dokku ps:rebuild APP

Please see the images documentation and tar documentation for instructions on rebuilding applications deployed by those plugins.

Upgrade From Source

If you installed Dokku from source (less common), upgrade with:

dokku --quiet apps | xargs -L1 dokku ps:stop # stops each running app
cd ~/dokku
git pull --tags origin master

# continue to install from source
sudo DOKKU_BRANCH=master make install

# upgrade to debian package-based installation
sudo make install
dokku ps:rebuildall # rebuilds all applications

To upgrade Herokuish from source, upgrade with:

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/gliderlabs/herokuish.git
cd herokuish
git pull origin master
IMAGE_NAME=gliderlabs/herokuish BUILD_TAG=latest VERSION=master make -e build-in-docker