Appliance Upgrade

Preface

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.

Process

Followed Brady's "OpenEMR 4.1.1 Appliance Manual" as much as possible. Modifications were necessary, however, given upgraded Ubuntu. Webmin and some of the programs are slightly different.

1. Installed latest 64 bit VMware player
2. Installed Ubuntu Server 64 bit 14.04 LTS (after confirming that my amd chip is compatible).
3. Installed Webmin.
4. Installed VMware Tools, (this is needed to support VIX).
5. Installed VMware VIX 1.14, (in windows OS not Ubuntu OS appliance); (this is needed to support PowerShell commands used for soft shutdowns and start up to properly automate backup of entire appliance).
6. Configure Powershell command scripts which are used with Windows Task Scheduler to automate backup.
7. Installed Postfix Mail Server.
8. Configured Static IP Address.
9. Confirmed VMware player clock and hardware clock same.
10. Installed OpenEMR 4.1.2-3 package, (which reads on Login Page as 4.1.2-7).
11. Patched to 7, (just to be sure).
12. Installed and configured SSL self signed Certificates, (via webmin).
13. Configured Firewall, (via webmin).
14. Configured Router for new port forwarding IP address.
15. Installed Brady’s “cool” appliance startup /shutdown script that confirms IP address.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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 (#).
19. Upgraded to OpenEMR 4.2.0-3.
20. Patch to 4.2.0-4.

Alternate Guest Operating System

If a Graphical User Interface and a more user friendly operating system are required, How to Install Linux Mint on VMware provides a clearly written guide with an easy-to-follow video.

How to Install Linux Mint in a VMware Virtual Machine

When a Forum discussion covering the Appliance upgrade with Linux Mint becomes available, this article will be revised.

In the interim the user is advised to parallel the steps above.