Updating

This guide will show you how to update your Coder deployment.

Before proceeding, review the updating considerations article for information breaking charges, architecture changes, and so on.

Prerequisites

• If you haven't already, install Helm.

• Before beginning the update process, ensure that you've added the Coder Helm repo to your cluster. You can verify that the Coder repo has been added to Helm using helm repo list:

  $ helm repo list
  NAME URL
  coder https://helm.coder.com
  

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  If you don't have the Coder repo, you can add it:

  helm repo add coder https://helm.coder.com
  

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• Ensure that you have superuser privileges to your PostgreSQL database.

Recommendations

• As with any significant maintenance operation, we strongly recommend taking a snapshot of the database before proceeding with the upgrade. In the event that there are upgrade issues, it is simpler and safer to roll back directly at the database level, since it guarantees restoration of the system to a known working condition.

• We recommend updating no more than one major version at a time (i.e., we recommend moving from 1.15 to 1.16 only).

• Coder v1.21 introduces new networking features. To opt in, you must migrate your workspace providers individually after upgrading to v1.21; see Upgrade steps for v1.21 for more information.

Update Coder

1. Retrieve the latest repository information:

   helm repo update
   

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2. Export your current Helm chart values into a file:

   helm get values --namespace coder coder > current-values.yaml
   

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   Make sure that your values only contain the changes you want (e.g., if you see references to a prior version, you may need to remove these).

3. Provide your Helm chart values file and upgrade to the desired version (e.g., 1.21.0):

   Note: If you omit --version, you'll upgrade to the latest version.

   helm upgrade --namespace coder --install --atomic --wait \
     --version <version> coder coder/coder --values current-values.yaml
   

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4. Set Helm value coderd.serviceNext=true in your Helm chart. To do so, open up current-values.yaml and add the following:

   coderd:
     serviceNext: true
   

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5. Update Coder with your new Helm chart:

   helm upgrade coder coder/coder -n coder --version=<VERSION> --values current-values.yaml
   

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Updating Coder when using a custom ingress controller

If you're using a custom ingress controller, the upgrade process from 1.20 to 1.21 requires a few more steps:

1. Retrieve the latest repository information:

   helm repo update
   

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2. Export your current Helm chart values into a file:

   helm get values --namespace coder coder > current-values.yaml
   

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   Make sure that your values only contain the changes you want (i.e., if you see references to a prior version, you may need to remove these).

3. Provide your Helm chart values file and upgrade to the desired version (e.g., 1.21.0):

   Note: If you omit --version, you'll upgrade to the latest version.

   helm upgrade --namespace coder --install --atomic --wait \
     --version <version> coder coder/coder --values current-values.yaml
   
   

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4. Update your Helm chart via the steps below. Refer to the 1.21 helm chart when making such changes:

   Rename all instances of cemanager to coderd.

   Redirect all traffic from your custom ingress to coderd.

   coderd now serves TLS certificates; to upgrade the NGINX ingress controller, set coderd.serviceNext to true. (See our TLS certificates for more information on how to configure Coder to issue and use certificates.)

   To manage SSH, go to Manage > Providers. Select the provider you want to modify, click the vertical ellipses to its right, and click Edit. Under Features, you can toggle External Connect on/off.

   To manage the Access URL, go to Manage > Admin > Infrastructure.

5. Redirect traffic by updating the following ports:

   Move TCP port 8080 to 80.

   Move TCP port 8443 to 443.

6. Update Coder with your new Helm chart values:

   helm upgrade coder coder/coder -n coder --version=<VERSION> --values current-values.yaml
   

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7. Upgrade workspaces to use Coder's new Networking v2 functionality.

   If you're using only the built-in provider and don't have additional workspace providers, go to Manage > Providers. Find your provider, click the vertical ellipses to its right, and click Edit. Toggle Networking v2 to enable.

   Alternatively, if your workspaces are distributed, migrate the providers to satellites.

Fixing a failed upgrade

While upgrading, the process may fail. You'll see an error message similar to the following samples indicating that a field is immutable or that Helm doesn't control a resource:

failed to replace object: Service "cemanager" is invalid:
spec.clusterIP: Invalid value: "": field is immutable

Error: UPGRADE FAILED: rendered manifests contain a resource
that already exists. Unable to continue with update:
ServiceAccount "coder" in namespace "coder" exists and cannot
be imported into the current release: invalid ownership metadata;
label validation error: missing key
"app.kubernetes.io/managed-by": must be set to "Helm"; annotation
validation error: missing key "meta.helm.sh/release-name": must
be set to "coder"; annotation validation error: missing key
"meta.helm.sh/release-namespace": must be set to "coder"

If this happens, we recommend uninstalling and reinstalling:

1. Export the Helm chart values into a file:

   helm get values --namespace coder coder > current-values.yaml
   

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   Double-check your values file to ensure it only contains your changes.

2. Run helm uninstall. This will uninstall all Coder-related services on the cluster (though it preserves the namespaces). It will not delete user workspaces or their associated volumes.

   helm uninstall will delete the timescale instance internal to the cluster but not its associated volume, so all data will remain intact. If you're using an external PostgreSQL database, this will not be affected.

   helm uninstall --namespace coder coder
   

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   Make sure to check the namespace for items that are slow to delete. For example web-ingress can take some time to release the IP addresses; if you run the install command before this process completes, the install process will fail.

   Running uninstall removes the web-ingress service that owns the ingress controller's IP address. As such, the web-ingress service may have a new public IP address or hostname after you reinstall; if this is the case, update your DNS provider with your new IP and CNAME.

3. Run the upgrade command with the new version number and Helm chart values file:

   helm upgrade --namespace coder --atomic \
   --wait --install --version 1.16.1 \
   coder coder/coder --values current-values.yaml
   

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   The ingress may attach to a new public IP address; if this happens, you must update the host and Dev URL IP addresses with your DNS provider.

Upgrading to v1.21

We introduced networking V2 (a.k.a. NetV2) in v1.21 as an optional operating mode for workspace providers. The following steps walk you through upgrading from an earlier version of Coder to v1.21, then from v1.21 to v1.22 (or later).

1. Upgrade the main Coder deployment to the most recent v1.21 patch (e.g., 1.21.4).

2. Upgrade your workspace providers (called Satellites in newer versions) to the same patch of 1.21.

3. Log in to Coder as a site admin or site manager. Go to Manage > Workspace Providers and enable NetV2 for the Built-in provider.

4. Enable NetV2 for each of your workspace providers. Validate that you can rebuild your workspaces. You may need to update DNS or TLS configurations for your clusters.

5. After you've upgraded all of your workspace providers, enabled NetV2, and validated your changes, upgrade the main deployment to the latest v1.22 patch.

6. Remove the workspace provider Helm chart. The final Coder version that uses the workspace provider Helm chart is v1.21; because the release disowns the service account from Helm, uninstalling the chart will not impact the workspace providers.

7. To re-establish the individual clusters as Coder satellites, upgrade Coder to the latest version and follow the satellite installation steps.