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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2025.2

# From 2019.1 or later to latest (single server)

These instructions assume you have a single server. If not, see From 2019.1 or later to latest (multi-server environment).

## Prerequisites

- To upgrade P4 Server to a newer version, your P4 Server license file must be current.
- We strongly recommend that you take a checkpoint so that you know you can recover if something goes wrong during the upgrade. (See Checkpoint files.) It is best to take the checkpoint at a time when the end-users are not active.

- Make sure that journaling is enabled. To learn more, see Journal files.

- Read the information at Upgrade overview.

## Upgrade for proxy, broker, and offline database

A proxy or broker only needs to get the latest binary.

You do not need to run p4d -xu against offline db.* files. An offline database is a set of db.* files periodically made current by replaying the journal files from the production server.

## Upgrade steps for P4D and its database

Upgrading the server requires you to upgrade the `p4d` binary, and then upgrade the `p4d` database that the binary reads from and writes to.

Upgrade the p4d binary | (Recommended) Verify files before and after a server upgrade. Shut down the server by running p4 admin stop Install the new version of the p4d binary, which you can obtain from Download P4D Server.
For Linux and macOS | For Windows
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make a copy of the existing `p4d` binary, and overwrite the existing `p4d` binary with the new one. Then proceed to "Upgrade the p4d database". | The installer detects that an installation exists and proceeds as "Upgrading the P4 Server Installation" and concludes with a message that "P4 Server failed to start. ..." This is to be expected. Proceed to "Upgrade the p4d database".
Upgrade the p4d database | As the OS account owner of the P4 Server, run p4d -r P4ROOT -J P4JOURNAL -xu replacing P4ROOT with the path to the P4ROOT directory P4JOURNAL with the directory path and name of the journal file as specified at P4JOURNAL. Wait until you see this message: Upgrades will be applied at server startup. Start the server. This upgrades the database level to be compatible with the server version. For the list of database levels by server version, see the database schema Upgrades. (Recommended) Verify files before and after a server upgrade. Inform users of this server that they can resume working.

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