How do you upgrade Cerb4 without SVN?

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

It’s definitely recommended you use SVN to update your Helpdesk, but if you have no other choice there is an alternative. The next best (and possibly only) option is to download the zipped build of Cerb4 and replace your existing copy. While it sounds simple enough, you should take some precautions along the way.

[edit] Prepare

Now instead of overlaying the extracted zip files on top of the existing cerb4/ directory, we're going to move the old cerb4/ to the side and replace it with the new files. Since everything is fresh, you ensure there's no code files lying around that are no longer used. Plus by moving the old files to a new location, you also get the benefit of a temporary backup.

• Move your cerb4/ installation out of the way.
• Backup the database (the structure can be modified on larger releases).
• Extract the new cerb4/ directory into the old path.

There's really only two things you need to hold onto when upgrading, the framework.config.php file and the storage/ directory. The latter stores saved attachments and mail that hasn’t been parsed yet. Although rare, it's possible the framework.config.php file could change between versions, so we'll avoid simply replacing the file.

• Instead, copy the database info from the top of framework.config.php which includes the name, user and password.

define('APP_DB_DRIVER','mysql');
define('APP_DB_HOST','localhost');
define('APP_DB_DATABASE','dbname');
define('APP_DB_USER','dbuser');
define('APP_DB_PASS','mypassword');
define('APP_DB_PCONNECT',false);

• Administrators are sometimes required to add IP addresses to the framework.config.php file, so they can finish an upgrade or run a cron. Therefore if you included any unique IPs that you need to hold onto in the AUTHORIZED_IPS_DEFAULTS, copy those as well.

define('AUTHORIZED_IPS_DEFAULTS', '127.0.0.1');

[edit] Finish

• Swap the information you copied from before into the new framework.config.php file.
• Unlike the file, just replace the storage/ directory.
• And finally re-adjust the file permissions if necessary. As usual check your httpd.conf file for the appropriate ‘User’ and ‘Group’ settings to replace apache:apache.

cd cerb4/
chown -R apache:apache *
chmod -R 0774 storage/

That’s it! If all went well, load up the Helpdesk in your browser and you should be taken to the login screen. Or if this was a larger update, the “click here to finish the upgrade” screen first.

• When upgrading through significant changes, you may notice complaints about missing files or find deprecated features are still active. These are signs of an "incomplete" install which you can verify if the build and version don't match -- instead of 4.3.1 build 951 you see 4.2.3 build 951. In these cases, try clearing the storage/ directory of any old files.
• After you verify everything is working, you can remove the install/ folder (again) as it isn't needed for upgrades.
• If you need to keep a more "permanent" backup of the old version make sure you do that, otherwise you can also delete the original cerb4/ folder now.

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Adapted from a Cerb4 blog post and contributions from Robert M.