Hi Barry
The upgrade to 1.06 does not wipe out any existing data. I would have liked to make a backup first but I can not find out how to do this.
I just upgrade to 1.06 and all my courses are working OK.
Its hard to know whether you're running MySQL on Linux/*NIX or Windows.
If you're on some *NIX/Linux and can get to a command line, its very easy to make a back up a database using the "mysqldump" program.
For example, I've named my database "elearning", so I run the command:
mysqldump elearning > /tmp/elearning-10-26-2002.sql
Net result is an ASCII file located in the /tmp directory named "elearning-10-26-2002.sql".
Run "gzip" against it to compress it, copy/move/put in a safe place until needed.
Good luck and ask questions if it doesn't quite give you the results you think you should get.
eg http://moodle.com/UPGRADING.txt
I should make a proper web page about it on this site sometime.
For the first time, I'm having some stability issues, where I type responses to journals and click save, and it doesn't. This could very well be a server/connection issue, but I'm not sure how to track the problem down. Also, students will sometimes save or finish a post or forum and then suddenly the ID page appears again. Do these symptoms sound like something others have had? Any suggestions? Thanks.
TOm
Moodle is part of a complex server environment and problems with the OS, Apache, MySQL or even bad RAM can show themselves in Moodle's GUI. In this case I strongly suspect this to be what is happening.
Please feel free to erase this original discussion. After spending some time troubleshooting, I think it has more to do with my server than with Moodle. Sometimes it feels like Moodle is the only thing that works. 
After scanning the various replies of these discussions, and recognizing the speed of your bug chasing, and remembering how many times you've helped me on individual installation issues, etc., it makes sense that you are feeling pressed about your thesis. The sooner you get the degree, the sooner you can devote yourself to Moodle and make a million bucks changing education...
How can a couple of us who are involved with Moodle daily, take support roles? Is there a way to separate technical from usage? I think I would be willing and able to take time helping people with the latter.
Thanks, Martin.
Tom
I don't think it has to be too organised - I'll probably set aside an hour every couple of days and pick up any threads that have been dropped.
If any of you know an answer to something (or at last have an idea) - hit the reply link and post it right away.
Most bugs and features should be in bugs.moodle.com anyway ... did I mention that I've already designed (but not built) a 'tracker' module so that the bugs database can be part of Moodle?