Update core using Drush

Before you begin

If not already done, it is suggested to read this Introduction. Which summarized all your options to choose from when updating your Drupal 7.

Update Drupal 7 core using Drush

Steps to update Drupal 7 core using Drush version 8 or earlier. Drush is the Drupal Shell.

1. Backup everything

Drush backs up the Drupal 7 core installation for you when updating, but you might want to back-up the sites directory just in case something goes wrong. You also want to take a backup of the database. Use the command below to back up everything:

drush archive-dump

2. Put your site in maintenance mode

drush variable-set --exact maintenance_mode 1
drush cache-clear all

3. Update Drupal with drush

drush pm-update drupal

Drush will also update your database if necessary.

4. Check that everything works

Go around your site and test everything! If you had modified robots.txt or .htaccess, make sure the modifications are reapplied. (Sometimes you can just copy the old files back.) If you used a custom installation profile, you might have to copy that back too. If the configuration file has changed, make sure your file has the latest and correct information - compare sites/default/settings.php and sites/default/default.settings.php.

5. Put your site online again

drush variable-set --exact maintenance_mode 0
drush cache-clear all

Alternative Drush commands

Alternatively, you might be interested in those other Drush commands:

• drush pm-update is the same as running drush pm-updatecode and then drush updatedb, so you can optionally run the latter two commands to break up the process.
• drush pm-updatecode has a number of options you can use with drush pm-update, including --security-only. Learn more here. You can run update commands with -n to prevent it from automatically answering 'y' to every 'y/n' request for user input.

Troubleshooting

• No code updates available for "drush pm-update drupal"
  Run following code which will refresh the available releases.
   

  drush pm-refresh

  and rerun

  drush pm-update drupal