Correct the upgrade documentation?

[stone_breaker]

Did a recent upgrade from v3 to v4 however encountered an undocumented pre-requisite.

The v4 upgrade errored:
Message: Ghost was able to start, but errored during boot with: update `members_stripe_customers_subscriptions` set `stripe_price_id` = '' - ER_BAD_FIELD_ERROR: Unknown column 'stripe_price_id' in 'field list' Suggestion: journalctl -u ghost_mundaringshed-org-au -n 50

The only clue available from ghost.org is this warning about database removal:

Upgrading to 2.0 Error: Unexpected end of JSON input

Hello, I’ve been at this for a couple hours now and I’d love to get my blog back up and running. I’m attempting to upgrade to version 2.0.2 from 1.22 and am getting a “Message: Unexpected end of JSON input” error upon running “ghost start”. I’ve tried “ghost run” and the specific error thrown is: “ER_BAD_FIELD_ERROR: Unknown column ‘comment_id’ in ‘field list’”. It seems to me either the backup or inserting the new 2.0 posts is causing havoc. Is there a way to wipe the JSON file clean? Then r…

I renamed the old database, then re-ran ghost upgrade. No errors, ‘nothing to see here’!:
Checking for latest Ghost version
All up to date!

After ghost start, everything appears to be present and correct.

I was following:

Ghost Docs

… which says nothing about database removal. If true, it’s a daft idea and rather scary.

Either this error needs to be caught and explained in plain english, or the documentation needs to warn that database deletion is required prior to the upgrade. None of this is intuitive or even meaningful to an experienced developer, so it badly needs documenting.

[vikaspotluri123]

You never need to delete your database when updating Ghost. It sounds like your MySQL version updated to version 8 which changes the default character set and creates issues due to conflicting character sets between tables.

The issue is well documented here:

Unable to upgrade Ghost from v4.2.0 to v4.3.0 (CASCADE - UNKNOWN_CODE_PLEASE_REPORT)

OK I think I got it ! It drove me crazy for a couple of hours. Like many people here I was using a Digital Ocean droplet, it updated to Ubuntu 20, MySQL updated to 8 without asking. I changed the schema default character set and default collate to utf8mb4 and utf8mb4_general_ci like suggested but it was still failing the update. I was almost going to give up and stay sad forever. Today I managed to fix this without tricks. What is happening MySQL changed to version 8. One of the changes is th…

[Caucasus-and-Mercury]

I think he meant documentation as in the /ghost.org docs. You’re referring to the forum.
One vital piece of information that really ought to be in the docs, I think, is that it seems not to be possible to do a rollback after a failed upgrade from 3 to 4.

[vikaspotluri123]

Aah unfortunate word choice I meant documentation as in the reasoning for the issue and how to solve it, not that officialdocumentation exists

[Caucasus-and-Mercury]

Well yes, and I should add: thank you, for helping out!

[stone_breaker]

Thanks Vikas,

I was on MySQL 8 from the start, and went from v3.36 to v3.42 without any issues, so this one will remain a mystery.