A Serverupdate usually does not require any special action, because each new version is compatible with older ones. If you want to be sure that everything works fine you should probably try with a backup copy of your database first. Apart from a server update there is also the web interface that can be updated (or in general any SPM package installed on the server)

Important Files

You can create a backup of your mysql, which includes the whole data of a server. You can hook up your server installation to a specific database by modifying the /etc/steam/steam.cfg configuration file: database=mysql://steam:steam@localhost/steam This string uses the local database named steam with user and password steam. Of course, other parameters of steam.cfg are important, too.

Used Libraries

Steam uses some external libraries, which might need some updating, too. There is libxml2 and libxslt as most important parts of the server. A server source distribution needs to be linked against the current releases of this libraries. Therefore, it might be important to make clear and recompile the whole distribution.

Update Procedure

The update procedure depends on the system you are using. The easiest way to update from a CVS installation is cd steam-version/ and typing "make install".

Debian

Install the provided debian (.deb) files for steam. There are files for the server and server binaries (steam-lib). All requirements are defined by the .deb files so this should be the easiest way to update a server. Note that the pike debian distribution needs a quite new kernel version (2.6 and better).

Redhat

We are currently developing steam on a redhat machine. Therefore, redhat is a good choice and our servers run smoothly. Unfortunately, we currently do not offer any rpm packages, so you need to stick to the source distributions.