If you are running a self-hosted Metabase application you probably want to upgrade it to the latest version from time to time. In this short tutorial I’ll show you the simple steps of upgrading Metabase.
Metabase upgrade steps
When running a self-hosted Metabase installation you are completely in control whether you want to upgrade it to a new release or not. Sometimes new x.y.0 versions may even contain a bug and you probably want to downgrade to the last stable release. Then you can wait some time for the next x.y.1 patch release fixing that bug.
In the Metabase Admin you can check if there is a new update available. Clicking that Update button will not actually install the update as Metabase currently has no updater integrated.
But the good thing is upgrading and downgrading your Metabase is pretty straight forward. When deploying a Metabase instance I always choose the pre built JAR file. Here we just need to execute the following steps:
Stop current version
Important: If you haven’t an automatic Metabase backup job running I strongly recommend to manually backup your Metabase application database and your current Metabase JAR file.
Then we need to stop the running instance and check if it’s shut down completely:
# systemctl stop metabase.service
# systemctl status metabase.service
Code language: Shell Session (shell)Upgrade to latest release
Now let’s get the download link for the latest release from the official download page. Change to your application directory and download the JAR file:
# cd /opt/metabase/
# wget https://downloads.metabase.com/v0.XX.X/metabase.jar
Code language: Shell Session (shell)Start new version
In the last step start the new version with your service script:
# systemctl start metabase.service
# systemctl status metabase.service
Code language: Shell Session (shell)By checking the status afterwards you will notice Metabase will perform some internal update tasks. This includes extracting some bundled plugin files and running necessary update queries on your application database.
After that your new Metabase version is up and running and can be reached via the web interface.