Ispconfig3 on Ubuntu 12.04 upgrade to 14.04

Upgrading a system running Ispconfig3 on Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS) to 14.04 is quite straight forward. However there are some issues to consider before doing so. It might affect some of the sites that are being hosted.

• Ubuntu 14.04 will move you from Apache 2.2 to 2.4
• php will be upgraded from 5.3 to 5.5. Most modern CMS:es like Joomla and WordPress will run on php 5.5 but clients can be using other software or third party extensions that are not ready for php 5.5

Upgrade procedure:

• Backup, backup and backup. And do some backup again.
• Prepare your users for some downtime. The upgrade can take up to several hours depending on your server.
• Upgrade all installed packages so you have the latest versions;
  apt-get update
  apt-get upgrade
• Then run do-release-upgrade
• During the upgrade process you probably will be prompted several times about configuration files that have been locally modified. I usually examine the differences using D option and in most cases I select to install the new configuration file using Y option.
• After Ubuntu has been upgraded and the system has been rebooted you must reconfigure Ispconfig3. I did it by using the update procuedure even though I was running the latest Ispconfig before I upgraded Ubuntu:
  cd /tmp
  wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/ispconfig/files/ISPConfig%203/ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5/ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5.tar.gz
  tar xvzf ISPConfig-3.0.5.4p5.tar.gz
  cd ispconfig3_install/install
  php -q update.php
• Allow Ispconfig3 to reconfigure your services
• In my case Apache2 wouldn’t start after the upgrade. It was caused by the ruby module and since I don’t use it my simple solution for the moment was just to disable it:
  a2dismod ruby
  service apache2 restart
• php imap extension had been disabled, so to fix it:
  php5enmod imap
  service apache2 restart
• If you are hosting PrestaShop sites, you may need to disable php opcache described here or disable encryption by issuing the SQL command: UPDATE `ps_configuration` SET `value` = ‘0’ WHERE `name` = ‘PS_CIPHER_ALGORITHM’;
• Apache2 configuration files has been moved from /etc/apache2/conf.d to /etc/apache2/conf-availible directory. Then to enable them you need to symlink the configuration file from /etc/apache2/conf-availible to /etc/apache2/conf-enabled and issue the command: service apache2 restart
• You might experience problems with Postfix after the upgrade with log entries like fatal: no SASL authentication mechanisms and mail not being sent from the mailqueue. In that case:
  apt-get install sasl2-bin
  edit /etc/default/saslauthd and set START=yes
  /etc/init.d/saslauthd start
service amavis restart
service postfix restart
  I also had to comment out two lines in /etc/postfix/main.cf:
  #smtpd_sasl_path = private/auth
#smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot
  And then do:
  service postfix restart