Trying to get FC3 to PHP4.3/4.4

xian · Unread post by **xian** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 9:28 am

Ok, so I got a new server for development but my crappy service provider didnt have any more FC2 (which is what I have in production) images - so I had to take FC3 w/Plesk 7.5.4.

I went ahead and changed my yum update info to ART - and ran the upgrade to get Plesk 7.5.4 to MySQL 4.1.21 and PHP 5.0.4., then realized that 5.0.4 was not good. Although I should just upgrade my production server to PHP 5 - I want to use eAccelerator to encode my PHP4 files; as I have found a page that describes in somewhat specific detail how to get the Zend/Ioncube/eA trio working together.

I would like to get this working on my dev machine before trying it on my production server - and I would like to see some performance increase due to the encoding of my PHP files.

Does anyone have any advice on a plan of action here to get my PHP5 downgraded to 4.3 or 4.4? Should I yum remove PHP and get PHP4 installed from there? How do I specify PHP4 packages from ART for FC3?

xian

xian · Unread post by **xian** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:15 am

The more I read the more is sounds like I might be out of luck unless I subscribe - or what I just realized is that I should still have all the packages I use on production.

This could be rough! Is there a way to rollback the upgrade to PHP5?

xian · Unread post by **xian** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 1:36 am

I have it working with only slight variations in the versions.

I uninstalled PHP via yum remove php, but left the FC3/ART packages for MySQL 4.1.21. Then I tried to reinstall PSA, but there were a lot of packages in the way, so I had to uninstall them (as the installer isnt very bright if a package is already installed).

I also had to made a few comments in my old httpd.conf/include to remove PHP related flags. But once that was done, it was a clear shot from start to finish with the PSA installer.

Production: FC2, Plesk 7.5.4, PHP 4.3.10, MySQL 4.1.15
Devserver: FC3, Plesk 7.5.4, PHP 4.3.11, MySQL 4.1.21

Phew! eAccelerator here I come.

xian · Unread post by **xian** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:30 pm

This is the saddest thing I've seen in quite some time:

grep php yum.log:

Oct 11 05:34:56 Updated: php-gd.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art
Oct 11 05:34:56 Updated: php-imap.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art
Oct 11 05:34:59 Updated: php-pear.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art
Oct 11 05:35:00 Updated: php-mysql.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art
Oct 11 05:35:00 Obsoleting: php-xml.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art
Oct 11 05:35:04 Updated: php.i386 5.0.4-13.rhfc3.art

NOOOOO!!!! Back to the drawing board. I LOVE auto update!

breun · Unread post by **breun** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:10 am

Exclude the php packages from the ART channel if you don't want them. (And don't run auto update if you want to avoid this kind of untested upgrade brokenness.)

BTW, your provider probably doesn't supply a FC2 image anymore because FC2 is EOL as far as Red Hat and the Fedora Legacy Project are concerned. And FC3 will be as well in a couple of months.

As always: I'm recommending using CentOS over Fedora for servers you don't want to upgrade every couple of months as it works just the same but has a much longer supported life cycle.

xian · Unread post by **xian** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:16 pm

So I just wanted to post a final update - everything is working great. I installed the newest version of eAccelerator (0.9.5), which is running in tandem with Zend and Ioncube Loader (as a PHP extension, not a Zend extension).

PHP caching is an excellent way to cut down on server load and load times - everyone should do it.