Upgrade

Workbench

These instructions describe the configuration requirements and how to upgrade Posit Workbench from a supported product version to the latest version.

To upgrade from Open Source to Workbench, follow the procedures available in the Upgrading from Open Source to Workbench section.

Upgrade requirements

Important

These instructions only cover upgrading Posit Workbench on the same server and between supported versions. If you are planning on changing servers or you are upgrading from an older, unsupported version, please see the How to Upgrade and/or Migrate Posit Team guide.

The following document covers adjustments that may need to be made to your configuration due to breaking changes between versions. To use this document, select the version you are currently on, or start at the oldest version that is newer than your version from the list below, and then follow the instructions until the end of the page:

Breaking Change

Workbench 2023.09 temporarily removed support for using an encrypted password in database.conf for PostgreSQL. 2023.09.1 added support SSL certificate authentication for database connections. In 2023.12 database password encryption has been restored. Both mechanisms are now supported.

There are also some optional recommended configuration changes for Workbench 2023.09+:

Increase Server Thread Pool Size

For servers that manage sessions for more than a few users, set www-thread-pool-size=8 in rserver.conf. The default value of 2 can reduce performance when the server is handling lots of requests at the same time.

Launcher Session Clusters

The following configuration settings have been deprecated from the vscode.conf and jupyter.conf configuration files:

  • session-clusters
  • default-session-clusters

In previous versions of Posit Workbench, the following settings in rserver.conf exclusively applied to RStudio Pro Sessions, but will now apply to all sessions:

  • launcher-sessions-clusters
  • launcher-adhoc-clusters
  • launcher-default-cluster

When set, the VS Code and Jupyter session specific cluster configurations will continue to apply to those sessions, but we recommend updating your configuration to use the global settings instead.

Load Balancing

A new configuration option, load-balancing-enabled, was added to rserver.conf. When set to 0, this option disables load-balancing. When set to 1, load-balancing is enabled even without the presence of the load-balancer configuration file. If the option is not set, and the load-balancer configuration file is present, Workbench will enable load-balancing as in previous releases.

The option delete-node-on-exit was added to the load-balancer configuration file. If you are deploying a load-balanced configuration of Workbench in Kubernetes, we recommend setting this option to 1. This removes the Workbench server’s database entry on shutdown so that stale node entries are not left in the internal database.

Continue to the Upgrade planning section below.

Due to the upcoming end of support for CentOS 7 in June 2024, CentOS 7 builds are no longer available for public download. If you have any questions, please contact Posit Support.

Posit Workbench Code Server

Posit Workbench now uses Posit Workbench Code Server (PWB Code Server) to launch VS Code sessions. This is an implementation of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code - Open Source repository built by Posit. When upgrading from an earlier version, follow the Migration steps for PWB Code Server.

Automatic User Provisioning NSS

If upgrading from Workbench 2024.04.x with automatic user provisioning enabled: the server-address setting in workbench-nss.conf should be updated to unix:/var/run/rstudio-server/rstudio-rserver/user-service.socket to fix a performance and reliability issue. See User Provisioning Configuration in the Workbench Admin Guide for more information.

If running Workbench behind a proxy server, you may need to update your NO_PROXY configuration: - HTTP Proxy variables are now supported in rserver and rsession, so it’s important to include local addresses to Job Launcher sessions and other internal services in your NO_PROXY list. - See the Outgoing Proxies section of the Posit Workbench Administration Guide for more information. (rstudio-pro#5893)

With this release, Positron Pro sessions are moving from preview to General Availability (GA). The upgrade process will automatically back up any existing Positron Pro configuration files to ensure production-ready defaults are properly installed.

During package upgrade, the following files will be backed up if they exist:

  • /etc/rstudio/positron.conf as /etc/rstudio/positron.conf.bak
  • /etc/rstudio/positron-user-settings.conf as /etc/rstudio/positron-user-settings.conf.bak

After completing the package upgrade, carefully review the backed up files and the new default configuration files and merge any customizations as needed.

Upgrade planning

Notify users ahead of time of the upgrade. You can use the admin notification feature.

Air-gapped environments

To upgrade your Workbench version in an air-gapped (offline) environment:

  • Download the appropriate .rpm or .deb file using the commands below on an internet-connected machine.
  • Securely copy the file to the air-gapped environment following your approved process.
  • Follow the upgrade procedures below on the air-gapped server.

Upgrade procedures

  1. Check if there are any active sessions running:

    sudo rstudio-server active-sessions

  • If there are active sessions, then suspend all active user sessions:

    sudo rstudio-server suspend-all

  1. Put the old version of the server into offline mode:

    sudo rstudio-server offline

  2. Download and upgrade Workbench:

curl -O https://download2.rstudio.org/server/rhel9/x86_64/rstudio-workbench-rhel-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo yum install rstudio-workbench-rhel-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
curl -O https://download2.rstudio.org/server/rhel8/x86_64/rstudio-workbench-rhel-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo yum install rstudio-workbench-rhel-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
curl -O https://download2.rstudio.org/server/jammy/amd64/rstudio-workbench-2025.09.1-amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ./rstudio-workbench-2025.09.1-amd64.deb
curl -O https://download2.rstudio.org/server/opensuse15/x86_64/rstudio-workbench-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo zypper install rstudio-workbench-2025.09.1-x86_64.rpm
Note

For older versions of RStudio/Workbench, please review the Previous Versions page.

  1. Restart the server:

    sudo rstudio-server restart

  2. Put the new version online:

    sudo rstudio-server online

The service will never be truly down (in the sense that users see a failure to connect). The offline mode keeps users from trying to start new sessions while you’re doing the upgrade.

Your configuration and settings remain unchanged from the previous version, and if you are running Workbench, your license status remains untouched as well.

Downgrading

Important

These instructions cover downgrading (rolling back) Workbench on the same server between supported versions. This only works with the default SQLite3 database; Postgres databases need to revert to a previous snapshot.

  1. Notify users before the downgrade. For RStudio Pro sessions, you can use the Notifications feature.

  2. Check for active sessions:

    sudo rstudio-server active-sessions

  • If there are active sessions, then suspend all active user sessions:

    sudo rstudio-server suspend-all

  1. Put the old version of the server into offline mode:

    sudo rstudio-server offline

  2. Uninstall Workbench:

    sudo yum remove rstudio-server
    sudo apt-get remove rstudio-server

  3. Download your preferred version of Workbench from our Supported Versions page. Installation instructions for each respective version of Workbench are provided on the same page. You can follow those instructions, as if it were a new Workbench installation.

  4. Lastly, put the newly installed version in online mode:

    sudo rstudio-server online
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