Have moodle in a clean state and run the upgrade with the new option: $ php admin/cli/upgrade.php --is-pending; echo $? No upgrade needed for the installed version 3 .7dev (Build: 20190322 ) ( 2019032200 ). Thanks for coming anyway! 0 Check you get the preceding message and 0 Hack a version file somewhere (version.php) and run it again: $ php admin/cli/upgrade.php --is-pending; echo $? An upgrade is pending 2 Check that is says it is pending, and also the exit code is 2 this time.