Category: Magento

While urgently patching dozens of Magento Commerce installations for the latest security alert, I needed a quick way to determine the version without logging into the admin. I found the answer in a note on the bottom of this wiki page: http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/groups/227/check_magento_version Just open app/Mage.php and look for the getVersionInfo() function. You’ll see something like this:

Here’s a Perl one liner to extract the version:

Thanks to Peteris Krumins for a great blog full of Perl one-liners. The one above was derived from this article: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/perl-one-liners-explained-part-six/ BTW … here’s the security alert: http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/important-security-update-zend-platform-vulnerability/ If you’ve not already patched then you should really get it done right away or contact Reliable Penguin for assistance.

Here are some useful notes for upgrading Magento: Before starting the upgrade, block all access to the site by turning on password protection. It is critical that only one browser execute the database upgrade. Next make a full backup of all files and the database. If the upgrade fails you’ll need these to restore. Using the command line seems to give the most stable results. Here’s a great article that shows the command line upgrade process: http://blog.nexcess.net/2011/03/11/upgrading-to-magento-1-5-0-1/ In the above instructions, if Step 2 fails then try running:

Then try Step 2 again. After the upgrade you’ll need to rebuild indexes and clear caches before products will display. If you get an exception like this:

Then use the fix described here: http://screencastworld.com/2010/07/magento/how-to-fix/php-fatal-error-call-to-a-member-function-tohtml-on-a-non-object-in-layout-php-on-line-529 If you get an exception like this:

Then follow these steps: Create folder at app/code/local/Mage/Core/Block/ Copy app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php to app/code/local/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php Edit app/code/local/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php and paste this code: