Magento ver. 1.9.2.2 Upgrade to 1.9.3.7 FAILED!!

[StitchUp]

Hi guys

I am a self confessed total newbie at doing upgrades, so much so, I've only once tried and failed!

I went to my admin page and Magento Connect Manager and Mage_All_Latest 1.9.3.7 (stable)  I then chose to Upgrade. A black window opened displaying activity and then:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PDOException' with message 'SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 2006 MySQL server has gone away' in /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php:228 Stack trace: #0 

/home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php(228): PDOStatement->execute(Array) #1 /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Varien/Db/Statement/Pdo/Mysql.php(110): Zend_Db_Statement_Pdo->_execute(Array) #2 /home/*********/public_html/magento/app/code/core/Zend/Db/Statement.php(291): Varien_Db_Statement_Pdo_Mysql->_execute(Array) #3 /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(480): Zend_Db_Statement->execute(Array) #4 /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php(238): Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->query('SELECT mg_core...', Array) #5 /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Varien/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Mysql.php(504): Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract->query('SELECTmg_core...', Array) #6 /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(828): in /home/*********/public_html/magento/lib/Zend/Db/Statement/Pdo.php on line 235
Exception during cache and session cleaning

My website and Admin became inaccessible, from memory it displayed a page similar to 'Site is down for Maintenance'.

I asked my hosting provider to restore my site to a backup  from a day before. They did this but still no joy!! They then informed me:

I have looked through the files, and don't see where it is logging any new errors, so and from what I am able to gather it would appear the site is stuck in maintenance mode, which I have no idea how to switch off. So it's not a code error anymore.

Found the maintenance.flag and removed it.. Site is up now.

/home/*********/public_html/magento/maintenance.flag was present, removed and site loads normally.

I would of course like to upgrade but, as you can imagine I'm worried I might screw up again!!

In Magento Connect Manager - Mage_All_Latest shows the options to Uninstall or Reinstall.

I do have a complete backup of my site.

Any suggestions or advice would be gratefully received. Please remember, I am a newbie

Regards and Happy New Year

John

[Tom Robertshaw]

The error "MySQL server has gone away" is something that you'll get on some hosts with Magento, particularly on cheaper plans or suboptimally configured servers.  It's not a Magento error, it's just a report that when Magento was doing something, potentially some long running MySQL queries during the upgrade, the MySQL server dropped the request and "went away".  I'

You can check a couple of suggestions on this helpful page: https://www.yireo.com/tutorials/magento/magento-administration/1284-mysql-server-has-gone-away

[StitchUp]

Thanks very much for your reply.

I suspect my problem might be with the memory available with my present hosting service 

UK VPS Professional - UK Virtual Private Servers.

At present memory is showing as 99% used with only 27Mb free!

I presently pay $88 each month for my hosting and I have absolutely no idea whether this is competitive or if I should be looking elsewhere.

Status

Online

Bandwidth

1 GB of 5 TB Used / 5 TB Free

0%

Memory

2 GB of 2 GB Used / 27.1 MB Free

99%

Disk

43 GB of 80 GB Used / 37 GB Free

54%

Thanks

[Tom Robertshaw]

It could be that. I'd have thought they would have noticed and recommended you upgrade. Configuration changes to php/MySQL that that article mentions could still help the situation. Might be worth asking them a follow up question about it. 

It's been a while since I used them but Nexcess are pretty well known and I've used them for shared hosting in the past (https://www.nexcess.co.uk/magento/hosting)