Plesk 12.1.x

[faris]

Well, 12.1.x is about to hit the release stage, and I thought some discussion might be useful.

I've decided to skip 12.0.8 and go directly to 12.1. Obviously I'm going to give it a few months after release for the usual bugs to be worked out before upgrading live servers.

I'm currently testing 12.1.19, which looks pretty darned good.

One of the first things I was going to do was install php-panda.
But before I do so, I noticed something new (to me) in Plesk's component installation section: There's a whole bunch of PHP versions listed under "Different PHP Interpreter versions": 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 plus "PHP5 support (from OS Vendor)".

I've ticked everything and I'm about to see what happens, if anything

[faris]

OK. This is interesting.
Looks like Parallels/Odin has its own repos for the extra php versions and they get installed from there.

It isn't clear where these versions are sourced from though.......

[scott]

Yeah I havent looked at them yet either, but they are probably using the SCL structure like we did with PHP panda.

[faris]

I see. So unless they have an arrangement with some 3rd party repo we don't know about, somewhere someone at Parallels will have to keep those versions up to date somehow, including backported security fixes. Or possibly they will not do so. There is no information on this at all from Parallels -- I'll have to ask them about it.

With Panda we know where we are with 5.3, at least. I'm not sure about the 5.4 situation? But maybe that's a discussion needs its own thread.

[scott]

We're going to do backports for 5.4 as well when that hits EOL. We have an awful lot of customers using Nucleus (and PHP Panda for that matter) on systems without control panels.

[faris]

Thanks. That's good to know.

[BruceLee]

one thing that I have read is this part. How will these (*marked blue) interfere/work with Atomics packages, which I would prefer to use?
Thanks a lot.

Improved PHP Support

PHP support was improved in a number of ways in Plesk 12.1 to better suit PHP developers and their development practices. The following features and improvements were introduced:

PHP modules can be managed independently for every PHP version and handler type.
Opcode cache modules support was added.
mod_ruid2 support for Apache was added.
php-fpm support for Apache 2.4 was added.

Administrators can choose the list of PHP modules to use for every combination of PHP version and handler type.

The support for APC and Zend OPcache modules, as well as WinCache was added in Plesk 12.1. PHP accelerators substantially increase the speed of PHP applications. Improvements of web page generation throughput by factors of two to seven have been observed.

mod_ruid2 is a suexec module for Apache that enables Apache child process to run within the security context of the system user owning the virtual host directory. It is a marked improvement over the previous Apache suexec module that had known security issues and required replacement.

According to the official Apache documentation, using PHP-FPM is the recommended way to run PHP under Apache 2.4. PHP-FPM is now set to be the default PHP handler when Apache 2.4 is installed on the server. Now it is also available for selection in the PHP handler list in individual domains' web hosting settings, as well as in the service plan settings.

SOURCE:http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP ... linux.html

[faris]

php-fpm was only available for the vendor-supplied php (5.3.3 in centos 6) in 12.1.19 when I tried it yesterday. Apache would have been 2.2.x as that's what you get with Centos 6 isn't it?

The OPCache modules were enabled in the Odin-supplied php packages by default.

[scott]

I havent seen them yet, but they sound exactly like SCL packages so there wouldnt be any conflict with either PHP Panda, or the regular DSO php. mod_ruid2 is the only one that could be a problem, since it isnt compatible with mod_security.

[BruceLee]

@faris: Thanks for the info. Yes, Apache 2.2.x is CentOS6 and Apache 2.4 in CentOS7. I havent tested Plesk 12.1 now.
But I would/will start 12.1 on CentOS7 and ≥ASL 4.0.11.

@Scott:
Thanks. so no modruid2 then.
Will this feature be working with panda packages? > PHP modules can be managed independently for every PHP version and handler type; Administrators can choose the list of PHP modules to use for every combination of PHP version and handler type.

No need to answer this now but it would be great to know what to expect.
Thank you very much

[scott]

Sure, basically all SCL does is make it easy for the packager to build a package to install in an alternate location, and make it easier for the user to enable/disable that package for a specific user or the whole system.

Under the hood its still the exact same way php was built, just with /etc in a new location. So normally you'd add your module configs to /etc/php.d, now you also have:

/opt/atomic/atomic-php54/root/etc/php.d
/opt/atomic/atomic-php55/root/etc/php.d
/opt/atomic/atomic-php56/root/etc/php.d

And while we started this on php, theres no reason we couldnt also have say Apache 2.4 for RHEL 5 in /opt/atomic/httpd24. The abstraction of scl would let you as the system administrator enable that as the default with the SCL commands

[BruceLee]

Thanks Scott. That sounds great.

[scott]

BTW- If you're interested in SCL'ing other packages let me know. Otherwise go play with Rev Limiter! It is entirely powered by awesome.

[BruceLee]

thanks. I definitely will.

[faris]

I've been digging quite deeply into 12.1 and so far I'm really, really impressed.

It makes 10.x look primitive.

Sure, it is only a little different to 12.0 (and to an extent 11.5) but it is really looking very polished.

I'm definitely going to be using Dovecote rather than courier, and I think this is the time to reluctantly switch to postfix. That's going to be a bit of a nightmare for me as I'm so used to qmail and spamdyke - I know how they tick, mostly. postfix is currently a bit of a mystery but I suppose I might enjoy learning about it.