Upgrading Plone is hard work. It's doable but hard.

The primary advice is: follow instructions carefully. The readme.txt in the linux unified installer is a good reference.

In my case, I opted for upgrading both the linux server and Plone and hence Zope at the same time.

I started with Plone 2.1.1 and zope 2.8. I then created a new linux system (running on WMVare which is a life saver). BTW: dist upgrade on ubuntu doesen't upgrade a plone site in any usable way.

I determeined zope2.9 was the only usable zope (and python 2.4) for my purpose.

>> sudo apt-get intsall zope2.9

Then i had to create a new zope instance:

>> /usr/lib/zope2.9/bin/mkzopeinstance.py

Then I directly placed Plone2.5.5 products in the Product directory, followed by copying the custom products I've been using from the Product folder of the old instance to the Product folder of the new instance.

Then I started zope with:

>> /var/lib/zope2.9/instance/plone-site/bin/runzope

This will printout what's missing on the new system: PIL , elemettree , libxml2

Search using synaptic to find the Python2.4 packages

>> sudo apt-get install python2.4-imaging
>> sudo apt-get install python2.4-elementtree

Once everything was installed, I moved Data.fs from old instance to new. I made shure old and new instance was in the same place with the same names (except for 'zope2.8' exchanged for 'zope2.9'). Then edit zope.conf (I forgot this detail which is a must to do).

Then I logged in as admin (same admin as old site, not the one you set when creating new instance). After logging in I go to mys site and upgrades it according to instructions going to the migration tabs / tools of the following products:

• protal_migration
• protal_atct

That's most of it.