Don't kill me, but i haven't upgraded my hub in a while. i'm still on 2.2.6.137, but i think i'm ready to take the plunge and do an upgrade.
with the release of 2.2.9.146, am i able to do a direct upgrade?
of course i would take the backup before proceeding with the upgrade just in case something messes up, but wanted to make sure nothing crazy will happen if i do upgrade OR will i need to do an intermediary upgrade for any reason. if i do need to do intermediary upgrades...what is that process (since all i know is to click the download from the GUI/download latest version from the diag tool)
You don't have a choice of which version you will upgrade to it should work, but yes a downloaded backup would be a good choice first. And if another release comes out soon after don't upgrade to that unless the current version is working well since the hub will only maintain a few back versions and will soon loose the ability to get back to your last known good version if you update frequently.
I don't believe that's quite true. Your hub saves a few versions that it has seen. The way to know what your options are is to go to Settings, Backup and Restore. Before doing anything, as Terk suggests, take a backup and download it to your computer. Then, above the table of on-hub backups is a link to click to restore a previous platform version. That will take you to the Diagnostic Tool menu, the same you get if you go to your.hub.ip:8081
There you can "Restore Previous Version". You may need to log in to the Diagnostic Tool using your MAC ID as the login field. The easiest way to do this is to first go to Settings, Hub Details, and copy the MAC ID. You can then just paste that into the login field.
That will let you know what versions the Hub knows about. Just in case if you need to roll back to something.
Then, do the update after reciting the magic incantation "Boole and Babbage".
If things go badly, then get to the Diagnostic Tools menu (port 8081), try a Soft Reset, then restore the backup that you made. Take a note of what Platform Version it shows you are running. Upgrading from some versions appeared unsuccessful, but, in fact, left you with the new platform.
Once you get a successful upgrade, then take another backup.
It's possible that you have been running for a while with a corrupted database. I had that issue during one of the 2.2.9.xxx upgrades. Victor (@gopher.ny) put in some code so that this shouldn't happen to you, and his code does what it can to recover. Some people weren't able to complete the upgrade process from some versions if they had a C-5. I believe those problems have been fixed, too. 2.2.9.146 seems to be a pretty solid update. There are still some minor problems that the staff is handling and will fix in the next update "real soon, now".
