Distro - Upgrade to FreePBX 16

Owned by Nathaniel Halbrooks
Last updated: Jan 31, 2024
2 min read

It is strongly recommended that a full backup of the system (13 ,14 or 15) be made prior to the upgrade steps below. If necessary, this backup can be used as a restore point to a new install. Note also that the new Backup and Restore module in FreePBX 16 allows restores of backups made by previous versions.

Overview 

This wiki will describe the process to upgrade your FreePBX systems to latest FreePBX 16.

This section covers the FreePBX module and custom OSS brands on the top FreePBX upgrades to FreePBX 16.

For PBXact customers please refer to Upgrade to PBXact 16 

 

Major difference between FreePBX 15 and FreePBX 16 is PHP version upgrade from 5.6 to 7.4.

Upgrade module will take care of upgrading OS packages like PHP 7.4 and dependent ones in Freepbx distro platforms.

Upgrade to FreePBX 16 from FreePBX 15

 

We can use Version upgrade module to update 15 system to 16 for the FreePBX Distro platform. 

Version upgrade module will take care of upgrading all the OS packages like PHP 74 and related dependent Freepbx packages along with module updates to FreePBX 16.

Please refer to "How to use Version upgrade Tool" wiki. 

 



Upgrade to FreePBX 16 from FreePBX 13/14

 

The recommended path from FreePBX 13/14 to FreePBX-16 is to use the "Backup & Restore" functionality to take a Backup from the working FreePBX-13/14 system and then restore to newly installed FreePBX-16 system.

 

The following steps will have you up and running on a FreePBX-16 system with the same configuration as your existing FreePBX-13/14 system. 

  1. Take Backup of your FreePBX-13/14 System.

    1. Take full backup of your FreePBX-13/14 system using Backup & Restore module of FreePBX-13/14.  Please refer to Using the Backup module for further details of how to configure and take full backup of your 13/14 system.

  2. Install FreePBX-16 on another server.

    1. Install latest available FreePBX-16 ISO from https://www.freepbx.org/downloads/  to another server. Please refer to Installing SNG7 Official Distro for more details about the installation process.

  3. Activate FreePBX-16 

    1.  Once FreePBX-16 installation is done, activate your FreePBX-16. Please refer to System Admin - Activation for more details about the system activation process.

  4. Upgrade all FreePBX-16 modules to current 

    1. After activation , FreePBX will show you a pop up with a list of available module updates. Otherwise you can check yourself by using "Check Online" function in Module Admin. Please refer to Updates#ModuleUpdates for more details.

  5. Restore 

    1. Please note that Backup & Restore has been completely re-designed in FreePBX-15/FreePBX-16 so you will see GUI differences in the way it used to work in FreePBX-13/14 vs FreePBX-15/FreePBX-16.

    2. Please refer to Backup and Restore FreePBX 15+ for more about the FreePBX-15/FreEPBX-16 Backup & Restore module. 

    3. We can restore the configurations by uploading the FreePBX-13/14 generated configuration backup to "FreePBX GUI → Admin → Backup & Restore → Restore tab".

    4. After a successful restore , your FreePBX-13/14 is successfully replicated to new FreePBX-16.

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