Neo4j community version Upgrade testing

General
1

Hi Team,
We are testing neo4j community version upgrade (2025.04 to 5.26.7).
We followed below process, please let me know any changes needed.

  1. stop neo4j DB service.
  2. Copy neo4j-home/data/database to backup/data
  3. Copy neo4j-home/conf to backup/conf
  4. Copy neo4j-home/transactions/ to backup/transactions

Download and untar new version 5.26.7

Replace above directories(database, conf, transactons) in the new version from the old version.

  1. Start the neo4j service from new version directory.
  • We tried this process but it failed to start and log shows this Error.
    Caused by: org.neo4j.kernel.lifecycle.LifecycleException: Component 'org.neo4j.dbms.database.DefaultSystemGraphInitializer@79ab97fd' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "Mismatching store id. Store StoreId: StoreId{creationTime=1749818829520, random=-2085802056066353369, storageEngineName='record', formatName='aligned', majorVersion=1, minorVersion=1}. Transaction log StoreId: StoreId{creationTime=1750419284330, random=-7152617303489487328, storageEngineName='record', formatName='aligned', majorVersion=1, minorVersion=1}".

025-06-20 11:47:51.649+0000 ERROR Failed to start Neo4j on localhost:7474.
java.lang.RuntimeException: Error starting Neo4j database server at /opt/neo4j-community-5.26.7/data/databases
at org.neo4j.graphdb.facade.DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.startDatabaseServer(DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.java:288) ~[neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.graphdb.facade.DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.build(DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.java:223) ~[neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.server.CommunityBootstrapper.createNeo(CommunityBootstrapper.java:38) ~[neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.server.NeoBootstrapper.start(NeoBootstrapper.java:185) [neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.server.NeoBootstrapper.start(NeoBootstrapper.java:100) [neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.server.CommunityEntryPoint.main(CommunityEntryPoint.java:30) [neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
Caused by: org.neo4j.kernel.lifecycle.LifecycleException: Component 'org.neo4j.dbms.database.DefaultSystemGraphInitializer@79ab97fd' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "Mismatching store id. Store StoreId: StoreId{creationTime=1749818829520, random=-2085802056066353369, storageEngineName='record', formatName='aligned', majorVersion=1, minorVersion=1}. Transaction log StoreId: StoreId{creationTime=1750419284330, random=-7152617303489487328, storageEngineName='record', formatName='aligned', majorVersion=1, minorVersion=1}".
at org.neo4j.kernel.lifecycle.LifeSupport$LifecycleInstance.start(LifeSupport.java:364) ~[neo4j-common-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.kernel.lifecycle.LifeSupport.start(LifeSupport.java:91) ~[neo4j-common-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
at org.neo4j.graphdb.facade.DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.startDatabaseServer(DatabaseManagementServiceFactory.java:279) ~[neo4j-5.26.7.jar:5.26.7]
... 5 more

2

I don't think file copy does work ?

What I do on upgrades (but I am currently using Docker):

  1. CALL apoc.export.cypher.all("database.cypher", {format: "cypher-shell"});
  2. copy database.cypher generated (unless you have a mounted external directory)
  3. upgrade or just create a new container
  4. In my case i use the parameters in Docker: NEO4J_PLUGINS=[“apoc", “apoc-extended”, ”bloom”, ”genai”, ”n10s", "graph-data-science"]
  5. put the file back in /import in the target container
  6. then from the shell inside docker run cypher-shell -u user -p password -f import/database.cypher
3

Thanks Josh, I don't full steps on Upgrade using Tar file in the neo4j Documentation.
Below steps are not very clear.

4

So you have an enterprise license?

5

No We are using community version 5.26.7.
For upgrade POS we are testing with 5.12 to 5.26.

6

The link you sent looks like Enterprise ... I would rather follow the cleaner backup-import

I missed in my steps that you need to remove "n10s" at the moment doesn't work and before you run everything create an apoc.conf:

apoc.export.file.enabled=true

and restart the server before the export/etc