I have just successfully upgraded this site with a newer version of Drupal. Six days ago, I received an advisory from Drupal through e-mail to upgrade all sites running versions 5.x and 6.x to its latest versions 5.22 and 6.16.

These versions are maintenance releases which will immediately fix security vulnerabilities and some other issues filed through Drupal's bug tracking system.

This is my first time to perform core upgrade using update.php and the steps provided in the UPGRADE.txt file that comes with the Drupal package. The steps were easy to follow except that it does not provide more details on how to perform step 1 which is about how to backup your database and Drupal directory, especially your "sites" directory. I think that they have purposely leave the details behind since this is a platform specific step.

If your site is hosted in a Unix or Linux operating system, let me share with you the commands I've used to create a backup of my site and my database.

1. Login to your hosting server through ssh and once you see the Unix/Linux prompt ($), create a backup directory for your Drupal site by executing this command:
   

   
   	$ mkdir <your_site_backup_directory>
   

2. Then create also a directory for your database backup.
   

   
   	$ mkdir <your_database_backup_directory>
   

3. After creating these backup directories, you go to your site's directory. This is where Drupal was installed and usually it is at the www directory which is usually a symbolic link to your public_html directory.
   

   
   	$ cd /path/to/www
   

4. Copy all files to your site's backup directory
   

   
   	$ cp -Rpv . ~/<your_site_backup_directory>
   

5. Go to the backup directory for your database and perform mysql backup.
   

   
   	$ cd ~/<your_database_backup_directory>
   	$ mysqldump -u <username> -p <databasename> > <databasename>.sql
   

Now that you have a full backup of your website and your database, you can then follow the rest of the steps in UPGRADE.txt.

Note:

After you have successfully upgraded your site, don't forget to copy the verification files like those from google analytics(if you are using them) from your site's backup directory to your www directory.