The actual versions of the upgrade are v1.9.5 (live) and moving to 2.0.1+ (daily download from Jan 2011).
The server had been setup with a working copy of the live system from January and tested through an upgrade to 2.0.1+ so we were happy that all would work well. This upgrade was also a server migration from an older RedHat box to a Debian vm, but the principles are the same for any upgrade. The Moodle version to be used was already installed as a staging platform.
The following notes relate to the process that I used for the live cut-over.
Backup of live 1.9.5 database via phpmyadmin
Copy the moodledata directory (the one with the files) from live to new
(must change owner and ensure write permissions after copy or you will get an odd blank page in the middle of the upgrade)
I used rsync to transfer between the servers here.
database created live_2 : (note to self:ensure utf8 collation setting for the db in future)
import old 195 data to new db
config.php modified to use the new db
run moodle2 as admin
auto upgrade : error check references installing UTF8. This is because I forgot to set collation = utf8 corrected* and reran upgrade
Update DNS settings (transferring from one server to another)
Changed apache config on new server to accept the new virtual host.
*Correcting the collation is as simple as using your mysql admin tool and issung ‘ALTER DATABASE db_name COLLATION ‘new collation name’;
with the new collation name inside single quotes.