Description
The setup window would just show it is running the /upgradedatabase command. The coredbutil.exe.log shows no updates past upgrading active policies.
Applies to 8.8 upgrades and 8.8 Service pack upgrades.
During coredbutil.exe /upgradedatabase there is a call made out to another program to upgrade policies.
Essentially we make the following call: Schedpkgupdate.exe /upgrade /publishall /noservice
Coredbutil.exe /upgradedatabase will wait until it gets a result from that program to continue.
Resolution
Generally we are just upgrading policies and there is not an actual problem.
On the core server while waiting for the upgrade to proceed check the task manager processes to see if schedpkgupdate.exe is running. If it is running then it generates Schedpkgupdate.exe.log in the management suite folder. It will show the upgrade status for each task one by one. It is here you would see exceptions if there are any. The troubleshooting will have to be based on the error codes being returned.
Sample of the logging when working correctly:
4/30/2009 9:53:33 AM : Updating Policy -- ACL.
4/30/2009 9:53:33 AM : Republishing policy task 11070
4/30/2009 9:53:36 AM : Updating Policy -- Quicktest.
4/30/2009 9:53:36 AM : Republishing policy task 11081
In some cases where there are thousands of policies in the DB, its just taking a long time to upgrade all of these. So make sure to not stop any processes if the log updates showing policies getting rebublished.
In one scenario it was more effective to run the command "Schedpkgupdate.exe /upgrade /publishall /noservice" manually. Once that succeeded then to rerun the upgrade successfully.
This is a use at your own risk step. If the upgrade seems to stop on one task or always fail on one task, it may be possible to stop the upgrade, open up the console and delete that task then restart the upgrade. This is probably only feasable for SP upgrades and not major release upgrades as the console probably would not be usable halfway through the upgrade.