How-To update Tiny Tiny RSS

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In Summer this year Google discontinued the Google Reader - a free service to collect various RSS streams and to view them online. Tiny Tiny RSS is an open-source software which provides the same functionality on your own (local) server. It requires PHP and MySQL, is quite easy to install and allows even to import data from Google Reader ...

... however running the reader on your own server - even if it provides "more" privacy - requires keeping the software up to date.

How to update Tiny Tiny RSS?
First backup your current installation as well as the database.

database backup using phpMyAdmin

Let's say your current installation version 1.9 is at ttrss, just create a copy of that directory naming it with the "old" version number. Why? If something goes wrong, you want to go back to the current - working - installation.

cp -rp ttrss ttrss-1.9

To create a backup of your current database use your favorite tool, e.g. phpMyAdmin

or by command line

mysqldump -u [db-username] -p ttrss > ttrss-1.9.sql 

For the actual update, you could download the new version and do a manual update, but there is a more convenient way. Let it do Tiny Tiny RSS itself:

cd ttrss; php -q update.php --update_self

This will download the new version, (create a copy of the current version - which we actually do not need because we created a backup above).

The current version also fixes the permissions on the cache folder, but seems missing the upload folder which it will tell you when opening the online interface the next time. Just change it yourself e.g.

chmod -R 707 cache/upload/

Now open the online interface in your browser, the software will run an update on your database ... done ...