upgrade neo4j 2.2 to 2.3 to 3.3 error "can't upgrade v0.A.5 to v0.A.8"

Question

i am having difficulty moving my neo4j database from version 2.2.0 community to 3.3.3 enterprise. the error on starting neo4j 3.3.3 is "Not possible to upgrade a store with version 'v0.A.5' to current store version 'v0.A.8' (Neo4j 3.3.3)."

the process i am following is to upgrade the database from 2.2.0 to 2.3.8 and then upgrade the 2.3.8 database to 3.3.3.

for upgrading from 2.2.0 to 2.3.8 i followed the documentation here: https://neo4j.com/docs/2.3.8/deployment-upgrading.html

basically, this consisted of:

• shutting down 2.2.0
• copying the graph.db directory to the server where 2.3.8 was installed
• placing that graph.db directory in the data directory, adjusting the permissions an
• starting neo4j

this process completed without error

for upgrading from 2.3.8 to 3.3.3 i followed the documentation here: https://neo4j.com/docs/operations-manual/current/upgrade/deployment-upgrading/

i applied this process on the 3.3.3 server to the graph.db directory transferred from 2.3.8

sudo service neo4j stop
rm -rf /var/lib/neo4j/data/databases/graph.db
neo4j-admin import --mode=database --database=graph.db --
from=/path/to/2.3/version/of/graph.db
sudo chown -R neo4j:neo4j /var/lib/neo4j/data/databases/graph.db
sudo service neo4j start

on the start of neo4j 3.3.3, the syslog showed a tremendous amount of error output, the salient part of which is:

Mar 15 22:35:38 ip-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX neo4j[61967]: 2018-03-15 22:35:38.644+0000 ERROR Failed to start Neo4j: Starting Neo4j failed: Component 'org.neo4j.server.database.LifecycleManagingDatabase@a202ccb' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "Not possible to upgrade a store with version 'v0.A.5' to current store version `v0.A.8` (Neo4j 3.3.3).". Starting Neo4j failed: Component 'org.neo4j.server.database.LifecycleManagingDatabase@a202ccb' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "Not possible to upgrade a store with version 'v0.A.5' to current store version `v0.A.8` (Neo4j 3.3.3).".
Mar 15 22:35:38 ip-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX neo4j[61967]: org.neo4j.server.ServerStartupException: Starting Neo4j failed: Component 'org.neo4j.server.database.LifecycleManagingDatabase@a202ccb' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "Not possible to upgrade a store with version 'v0.A.5' to current store version `v0.A.8` (Neo4j 3.3.3).".

inspection of the graph.db from 2.3.8 on the 3.3.3 server showed:

neo4j-admin store-info --store=/path/to/2.3/version/of/graph.db
Store format version:         v0.A.5
unexpected error: Unknown store version 'v0.A.5'

my server information is:

• 2.2.0 community: ubuntu 14.04 installed, i believe, from tarball (i did not build this server)
• 2.3.8 community: ubuntu 16.04 installed via apt-get running as service
• 3.3.3 enterprise: ubuntu 16.04 installed via apt-get running as service

my question is:

what is the correct process for successfully upgrading an existing 2.2.0 db to 3.3.3?

Answer 1

The neo4j operations manual, since version 3.1, documents how to upgrade a database from version 2.x to 3.1+.

For instance, here is the section of the docs for upgrading from 2.x to 3.3.4.

Answer 2

Maybe the docs are not fully accurate here and we need to take an additional step.

Since your upgrade to 2.3.8 seemed to work nicely I'd take this as baseline for the following procedure.

Long time ago I've written a hackish upgrade script, see https://gist.github.com/sarmbruster/3011606. In line 46 change version to 3.0.12 and check if upgrade 2.3.8 -> 3.0.12 worked. If yes, proceed with 3.3.4.

How large is your graph.db folder?