Appliance Upgrade
Preface
The Appliance had been built back in the days when it was nearly impossible for the average user to install OpenEMR. In the Windows environment OpenEMR did not work well. With the Appliance installed in the Ubuntu guest, Windows users had an alternative.
The next section is courtesy of Henry Alvarez, M.D.
Dr. Alvarez configured his 4.2.1 Appliance with the OpenEMR 4.1.1 Appliance Manual as a guide.
He upgraded OpenEMR to 4.2.0, the guest operating system from Ubuntu 8.04.4 to Ubuntu 14.04 and the VM Player.
Forum discussion found here.
Appliance with Windows Host and Ubuntu Guest
I followed Brady's manual as much as possible. Modifications were necessary, however, given that an upgrade of Ubuntu was a prerequisite. Webmin and some of the programs are slightly different.
- Confirmed that my microprocessor is compatible and supports virtualization.
- Installed latest 64 bit VMware Player.
- Installed Ubuntu Server 64 bit 14.04 LTS. This version does not have a Graphical User Interface.
- Installed Webmin.
- Installed VMware Tools. This is needed to support VIX.
- Installed VMware VIX 1.14, in windows OS (host), not Ubuntu OS (guest). It is needed to support PowerShell commands used for soft shutdowns and start up to properly automate backup of entire appliance.
- Configure Powershell command scripts which are used with Windows Task Scheduler to automate backup.
- Installed Postfix Mail Server.
- Configured Static IP Address.
- Confirmed VMware Player clock and hardware clock are synchronized.
- Installed OpenEMR 4.1.2-3 package, (which reads on Login Page as 4.1.2-7).
- Patched to 7, as an extra precaution.
- Installed and configured SSL self signed Certificates, via Webmin.
- Configured Firewall, via Webmin.
- Configured router for new port forwarding IP Address.
- Installed Brady’s cool appliance startup /shutdown script that confirms IP Address.
- Copied restore file from old 4.1.2-7 appliance to new 4.1.2-7 just to be sure as they had different dates.
- Tried Backup via Web interface, but found that sql file was not properly being created. When I tried to restore got an error stating (tar substituting ”.” for empty member name). By untarring the emr_backup.tar file I found it could not find the sql file only the openemr file.
- Thus did manual backup and taring of both sql file and openemr file as per wiki and this restored without a hitch. Avoided permission problems by using (sudo –i) thus working in root (#).
- Upgraded to OpenEMR 4.2.0-3 or the most current version.
- Patch to 4.2.0-4 or the most current patch.
Alternate Guest Operating System
The Appliance manual has instructions for adding a desktop. If a more user friendly operating system is required, How to Install Linux Mint on VMware provides a clearly written guide with an easy-to-follow video.
The reader should note that the Appliance is no longer maintained because the installation of the Package either in Windows or in Ubuntu - Debian has become so simple that the Appliance has become obsolete.
If portability is a desired feature, the reader is advised to install the Windows XAMPP Package and deploy this backup method. No reason to crawl when one can fly.
