OMERO upgrade checks

On each startup the OMERO server checks for available upgrades via the UpgradeCheck class. An HTTP GET call is made to the URL configured in etc/omero.properties as omero.upgrades.url, currently http://upgrade.openmicroscopy.org.uk by default (note that viewing that link in your browser will redirect you to this page).

Note

If you have been redirected here by clicking on a link to http://upgrade.openmicroscopy.org.uk in an error message or log while trying to run one of the Bio-Formats command line tools, please see the Bio-Formats command line tools documentation for assistance.

Actions

Currently the only action taken when an upgrade is necessary is a log statement at WARN level.

2017-09-01 12:21:32,070 WARN  [                 ome.system.UpgradeCheck] (      main) UPGRADE AVAILABLE:Please upgrade to 5.5.0-m4 See https://downloads.openmicroscopy.org/latest/omero for the latest version

Future versions may also send emails and/or IMs to administrators. In the case of critical upgrades, the server may refuse to start.

Privacy

Currently, the only information which is being transmitted to the server is:

  • Java virtual machine version
  • operating system details (architecture, version and name)
  • current server version
  • poll frequency (for determining statistics)
  • your IP address (standard HTTP header information)

Note

Currently the “poll” property is unused.

If this is a problem for your site, please see Disabling below.

Disabling

If you would prefer to have no checks made, the check can be disabled by setting the omero.upgrades.url property to an empty string:

omero.upgrades.url=

Developers

To use the UpgradeCheck class from your own code, it is necessary to have common.jar on your classpath. Then,

ResourceBundle bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle("omero")
String version = bundle.getString("omero.version");
String url = bundle.getString("omero.upgrades.url");
ome.system.UpgradeCheck check = new UpgradeCheck(
  url, version, "insight"); // Or "importer", etc.
check.run();
check.isUpgradeNeeded();
// optionally
check.isExceptionThrown();

will connect to the server and check your current version against the latest release.

See also

OMERO.server installation
Instructions for installing OMERO.server on UNIX and UNIX-like platforms
OMERO.server upgrade
Instructions for upgrading OMERO.server
Server security and firewalls
Description of OMERO security practices