Upgrade a single instance to a 4.x patch release

This section describes how to upgrade a single Neo4j instance to a newer PATCH release within the same MAJOR and MINOR version.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have completed all the tasks on the Upgrade checklist.

Prepare for the upgrade

  1. Install the Neo4j version that you want to upgrade to. For more information on how to install the distribution that you are using, see the Operations Manual → Installation section of the version that you want to install.

  2. Replace the neo4j.conf file with the one that you have prepared in section Prepare a new neo4j.conf file to be used by the new installation.

  3. Copy all the files used for encryption, such as private key, public certificate, and the contents of the trusted and revoked directories (located in <NEO4J_HOME>/certificates/).

  4. Restore each of the databases and transactions that you have backed up in the new installation, including the system database, by either using neo4j-admin restore (online) or neo4j-admin load (offline), depending on your backup approach. If you are running a Debian/RPM distribution, you can skip this step.

    If your old installation has modified configurations starting with dbms.directories.* or the setting dbms.default_database, verify that the new neo4j.conf file is configured properly to find these directories.

Upgrade your instance

  1. Start the instance by running the following command from <NEO4J_HOME>:

    bin/neo4j start

    The upgrade takes place during startup.

  2. Monitor the neo4j.log file for information on how many steps the upgrade involves and how far it has progressed.

Post-upgrade tasks

It is good practice to make a full backup immediately after the upgrade.