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The updater is designed to fail gracefully, leaving as much information about what went wrong as possible, if there is any error. As such, it initialising initialises error handlers, begins logging to disk and loads a fail safe email address to contact if anything goes wrong. This early part of the updater has been rigorously tested to minimise failures; so if something goes wrong, at minimum an email should be sent and error log files will be saved on disk.
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The updater then must decide what to update (as multiple instances of Wise Owl Legal can be installed on the same physical Appliance) and what to package to install.
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All system level configuration settings are read from the Wise Owl SQL database. These are sent to each script so they can use the information to copy or configure component correctly.
Each script is executed in turn. The first script deactivates all background components on the Appliance, the last script re-activates them. Each script updates a single component of the Wise Owl Appliance; there are currently 16 scripts.
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Finally, the update success is reported to the Wise Owl update server and the success email is sent. It also reports the new version of the Appliance . to the update server; Wise Owl tracks the update status of each Appliance in this way.
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Depending on what stage the updater fails at determines how it handles that failure. At minimum, the details of the error are written to log files on the Appliance.
By default, each version will be retried up to 5 times if there are any errors. After 5 times, the update will be deemed a failure and it will give up.
A failure during Low Level Initialisation will send an email directly to the Wise Owl Helpdesk. This represents a very low level error; the Appliance likely requires repair or replacement. The Wise Owl update server is not contacted.
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