Upgrade Wizard fails from 7.11.18 to 7.12.8 – Missing sugar_version.php and 65x_to__mysql.sql

📦 Install & Upgrade Help
1

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to upgrade a SuiteCRM instance from 7.11.18 to 7.12.8 using the Upgrade Wizard, with the intention to later upgrade to 7.14.4 (knowing it requires PHP 8.1).

However, when I reach the execution step of the upgrade process, it fails with these errors in the upgradeWizard.log file:

[UpgradeWizard] - Running SQL file /bitnami/suitecrm/cache/upgrades/temp/3wOniI/scripts/65x_to__mysql.sql
[UpgradeWizard] - *** ERROR: Schema change script [/bitnami/suitecrm/cache/upgrades/temp/3wOniI/scripts/65x_to__mysql.sql] could not be found!
...
[UpgradeWizard] - *** ERROR: no sugar_version.php file location found! - cannot complete upgrade...

Additional Info:

  • Upgrade package: SuiteCRM-Upgrade-7.11.x-to-7.12.8.zip from the official website.
  • Environment: Bitnami stack (Apache 2.4.46, PHP 7.3.27, MySQL).
  • The sugar_version.php file wasn’t updated — it still shows version 6.5.25.
  • The file 65x_to__mysql.sql does not exist in /cache/upgrades/temp/..., which is odd because this is not a 6.5.x upgrade.
  • The frontend shows a 500 Internal Server Error right after “adding modules”.

Things I’ve tried:

  • Verified file and folder permissions.
  • Tried a fresh download of the upgrade package.

Has anyone else faced this issue?
Could it be that the Upgrade Wizard is incorrectly expecting a 6.5.x schema file?

Any help on how to complete or fix the upgrade would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

2

Check out the following links:

  1. Upgrade from 7.11.12 to 7.12 does not work · Issue #9592 · salesagility/SuiteCRM · GitHub

  2. Unable to upgrade to 7.11.1 - #5 by chamullo

  3. Steps to Upgrade SuiteCRM 7.11.13 to 7.14.6

  4. How to upgrade your SuiteCRM installation - PlotHost

  5. Upgrade from 7.11.18 to 7.11.22 fails and breaks the frontend and login!

  6. 7.11.10 to 7.11.12 upgrade wizard immediate 500 Error - #16 by dsoden

3

Yeah, that’s a known headache when upgrading older SuiteCRM 7.11.x builds, especially on Bitnami stacks. What’s happening is the Upgrade Wizard is misdetecting your current version because the sugar_version.php file still reports 6.5.25 — that value comes from the old SugarCRM base, and it confuses the upgrade scripts into thinking it’s upgrading from 6.5.x instead of 7.11.x. As a result, it tries to run a non-existent schema change script like 65x_to__mysql.sql and then crashes with a 500 error.

The easiest fix is to manually edit your SuiteCRM root sugar_version.php and make sure it correctly reflects your current version, like:

$sugar_version = '7.11.18';
$suitecrm_version = '7.11.18';

Then clear the /cache/upgrades/temp/ and /upload/upgrades/ folders, re-upload the official SuiteCRM-Upgrade-7.11.x-to-7.12.8.zip, and rerun the Upgrade Wizard. Also double-check file permissions (chown -R daemon:daemon /opt/bitnami/suitecrm or www-data depending on your stack).

If it still fails, you can unpack the upgrade zip manually, copy over the sugar_version.php and modules updates yourself, then run Repair and Rebuild from Admin — but fixing the version mismatch usually makes the wizard behave correctly.

In short, it’s not your DB or environment — it’s just SuiteCRM thinking you’re on an ancient 6.5.x base. Correct the version and restart the upgrade. And if at any point your database gets corrupted during retries, you can use Stellar Repair for MySQL to safely rebuild or recover any damaged tables before continuing.