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Php 5.3


TCH-Dick

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Greetings,

 

On Friday May 6, 2011 at 9:PM EST, we are beginning phase one of our planned upgrade to PHP 5.3 on all shared/reseller servers. As always we are selecting one server for this upgrade, we then expect to complete a full roll out before the end of May. I will be updating the forum for the selected server shortly and Ryan will be updating this notice later tonight with some technical insight into this planned upgrade. Please see Ryan's follow up concerning the details of this update.

 

We will post in the Server Forum for each individual server at least one day in advance of any PHP updates. We will also post any relevant information via twitter.

 

Thanks for your time and let us know if you have any questions.

 

 

As part of our commitment to maintaining our servers with the latest technologies available, we have developed an implementation of PHP 5.3 that also allows full retention of PHP 5.2 support. The deployment will make PHP 5.3 the servers default PHP handler and a simple htaccess option is available that provides the ability to revert to PHP 5.2.

 

However, in the interest of avoiding likely issues of sites breaking due to incompatibilities with PHP 5.3, what we will be doing is setting the htaccess option on all sites to force PHP 5.2 usage, which will effectively mean nothing will have changed for you compatibility wise. Then, when and if you decide that PHP 5.3 is something you would like to use or experiment with, you may remove the entry from your sites htaccess file.

 

During our installation of the combined PHP 5.3/5.2 setup, we will check to see if a .htaccess file exists under your users public_html ( /home/user/public_html/.htaccess ), if one does not exist, we will create it for you. Then, the new PHP 5.2 handler type will be added/appended to the .htaccess file ( AddType application/x-httpd-php52 .php ), this will force the account to utilize PHP 5.2, it will be inherited by all paths under your public_html

 

That is it! If at any time you want to test your domain with PHP 5.3, you simply remove the entry from the htaccess file -- if the content you are testing breaks, just re-add it and you will be back on 5.2. As always, if confused or in doubt about any of this, please reply here or open a support ticket and we will be glad to assist you.

 

PHP 5.2 handler type:

AddType application/x-httpd-php52 .php

 

PHP 5.3 handler type:

AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php

 

TIPS:

- If you have the 5.2 type set in your public_html/.htaccess, and would like to test 5.3 on PHP scripts in, for example, public_html/test/, then you would create a public_html/test/.htaccess and add 'AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php' to it. Now, the test/ path will be forced to 5.3.

 

- If you would like to have 5.3 as the default across your site, you only need to remove the 'AddType application/x-httpd-php52 .php' entry from public_html/.htaccess and the entire site will then default to 5.3. As with above , you can set the .htaccess in any specific path and add the 5.2 handler to force that version in just that path.

 

- For PHP options specific to 5.2 and 5.3, you can create php.ini files as needed in the applicable paths, for example, if you have the 5.2 handler type set under public_html/oldapplication/, you can drop a php.ini file into that path and its options will apply to PHP requests under that path.

 

Once again, the bottom line here is that, be default, everything will be transparent and PHP 5.2 will remain the version your sites run unless you explicitly remove the 5.2 handler from your .htaccess file. Further reading on features that have changed in PHP 5.3 can be found at: http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration53.deprecated.php

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I have that warm/fuzzy feeling I often get from TCH.

 

I'm scrambling to update my last un-upgraded clients to PHP 5.3, but I greatly appreciate your effort to keep 5.2 support alive.

 

Many unloved and abandoned PHP websites are out there, which may break under PHP 5.3. TCH is trying to buy us some time, but backward compatibility is an impossible game.

 

The web is littered with endangered websites -- what web designer wants to take over a Smarty PHP website and climb that dead-end learning curve?

 

Did Ruby on Rails survive its 15 minutes of fame? Local (Austin) craigslist job ops suggest "maybe not".

 

Kudos to TCH for an interesting approach, and a clear understanding of how to serve resellers.

 

This latest effort is above and beyond...

 

Cheers,

 

Chris Butler

Edited by cbutler
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  • 2 weeks later...

Since this update was done, something seems to have gone wrong with PHP error handling. I was updating a script that was working a few weeks ago. When I ran it, I got no output, so I added ECHO statements, which did appear. That lead me to believe that there might be an error in my script, so I intentionally added a syntax error and ran the script again. No error message was output!

 

To prove that it wasn't my updates, I took another script of mine, uploaded it, ran it and it worked fine. I then injected a syntax error, ran it and got no output at all.

 

Previously, when I had a PHP error, I'd get output in my browser about the error (type of error, line number, etc.), but I'm not getting that now.

 

Did anything change with regard to PHP errors?

 

Thanks,

Steve

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It would be best to send in a help desk ticket so that we can review your issues in full.

OK, I opened a ticket. The response was to upgrade me to PHP 5.3. Upgrading to PHP 5.3 did fix the problem, but that doesn't explain why PHP 5.2 doesn't display errors. It appears that the transition isn't as seamless as expected.

 

Steve

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  • 4 months later...

Welcome to the forums Stimper

 

You can add this to the top of your php script to turn on error display.

>ini_set('display_errors',1);
error_reporting(E_ALL|E_STRICT);

 

Or you can create a php.ini file in your web folder with the following

>error_reporting  =  E_ALL
;error_reporting  =  E_ERROR
display_errors = On
;display_errors = Off

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 months later...

Hi,

 

I'm adding the correspondence below in case there are other users that have the same issue as myself - it would appear that php 5.2 support is being removed from TC servers without notice (a non-working php application was certainly the first I heard!).

 

Is this the official TC position - basically if you were reliant on 5.2 you should have upgraded by now and if you haven't, well that's just tough?!!!

 

I appreciate that TC have provided us with an upgrade path but if its intended removal had been communicated, we would have initiated a planned upgrade - rather than having a clients estore cease functioning.

 

I host several domains with TC and I've had repeated occassions where changes are made on the servers that cause my sites to break. Where am I supposed to pick up on the changes you are making, so that I can ensure my clients sites are not disrupted?

 

NOT a happy TC customer :-(

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Spaford

 

Staff

 

 

Posted on: 09 May 2012 04:21 AM icon_new3d_orange.png

 

 

Hi,

 

Please note that PHP 5.2 has already been end of lifed on 12/31/2012 and we are phasing out older version (5.2) from all of our servers. You have installed an older version of KHXC at /shop folder that is needed to be upgraded to the latest version in order to work with PHP 5.3

 

 

 

Thank you.

Regards,

--

Alex Spaford

Level 2 System Administrator

TotalChoiceHosting LLC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Ward

 

User

 

 

Posted on: 09 May 2012 04:31 AM icon_new3d_orange.png

 

 

Thanks Alex, great to know! However, this means that we now have a non-working estore which we have to upgrade at zero notice!

 

Is there any way php 5.2 can be reactivated for a couple of weeks to give us chance to do the upgrade work, or for our domain to be placed on one of your servers that still has php 5.2 working (as vandos did up until a few days ago), please?

 

Regards,

 

Pete

 

Alex Spaford

 

Staff

 

Posted on: 09 May 2012 04:41 AM icon_new3d_orange.png

Hi,

 

The notice of the implementation of PHP 5.3 was already been announced before an year - and we provided php 5.2 alternative for users to upgrade the applications to work with PHP 5.3.

 

As of now, the alternative PHP 5.2 has been removed from the server and I am sorry, there is no way to reinstate php 5.2 on the server.

 

 

 

Thank you.

Regards,

--

Alex Spaford

Level 2 System Administrator

TotalChoiceHosting LLC.

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While we are planning to phase out PHP 5.2 on all our servers, we have currently only made this move on new servers and those that have been restored recently. We will be making an effort to not have it set as the default for all accounts, however, this would not cause the issues you are seeing.

 

I am now reviewing this with our staff to determine the cause, so we can get your site in working order.

 

 

As for PHP versions and updating scripts, we always recommend that everyone keep their scripts up to date and do so as soon as possible. We have never moved our systems from one major version to another, such as 4 to 5 or 5.2 to 5.3, without proper announcement or a stop gap solution. I assure you when the time comes that we choose to no longer support dual versions on any of our servers, and it will, we will make a full announcement.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I appreciate that TC have provided us with an upgrade path but if its intended removal had been communicated, we would have initiated a planned upgrade - rather than having a clients estore cease functioning.

 

I host several domains with TC and I've had repeated occassions where changes are made on the servers that cause my sites to break. Where am I supposed to pick up on the changes you are making, so that I can ensure my clients sites are not disrupted?

 

NOT a happy TC customer :-(

 

I would like to voice my own dissatisfaction with TCH. I understand that upgrades will happen. However, there must be a way we're notified by email instead of having to keep checking TCH forums for upgrade notices. The first notice we have that upgrades were performed were when the website started failing.

 

I haven't seen any info regarding how we can be notified regarding server updates. I've also tried talking to customer support via live chat and the only response I received is "migration was completed successfully". I have no doubt in TCH technical prowess. I do feel frustrated with TCH customer care.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I don't understand the TCH announcement and support position. The beginning of this post, May 5 2011, describes "full retention of 5.2 support", and how users can switch back and forth. There was no further announcement. Then people started posting how 5.2 was broken. Then Alex posted on May 9th that PHP 5.2 is end of life on 12/31/2012. The next post was from Dick on the same day, who said "I assure you when the time comes that we choose to no longer support dual versions on any of our servers, and it will, we will make a full announcement." Less than three weeks later my web site is down.

 

Where was this "announcement" that we would have seen had we been looking or subscribed? Where should we have looked? Clearly not "Latest Hosting News"! Maybe "Support Announcements"? No, it has less information than this thread. "Server Forum"? The last post for Alderaan is from May of 2011, announcing the dual 5.2/5.3 upgrade, and nothing since. Search for "PHP" across all forums? 0 hits. Everything tells me that I have no immediate need to be working on a migration. And when I asked a support tech during an online chat how I was supposed to know this was happening, I was told to "read the forums" and then she hung up on me.

 

I am very disappointed in TCH.

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The only shared servers we have that are not running PHP 5.2 are those that have recently been restored or migrated, and Alderaan is not one of these servers. However, PHP 5.2 was not working on this server due to recent standard Apache update, which has now been corrected. While we were corecting this issue, we commented out the the PHP 5.2 option from your .htacess so the site would load and it appears to be running just fine on PHP 5.3. Since the site has no issues running now, we have left it on PHP 5.3. I reccomend you leave it running on PHP 5.3, but If you do need 5.2 it is there, just unncomment the line in your .htacces file.

 

I still stand by my statement that "I assure you when the time comes that we choose to no longer support dual versions on any of our servers, and it will, we will make a full announcement." Until then we will look into the source/reason for the blanket upgrade statement by our staff.

 

 

 

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That is good to hear. Tech support told me that I had to move to 5.3 and that there were no other options. Upon further investiagion, I discovered that the .htaccess file had been cleared without my knowledge, and when I added the 5.2 line back in, the site worked again. I'm not sure how you decided that the site had no problems, since the home page wouldn't even load for a week.

 

I'm also unclear as to why a significant change like that was not posted on the server status forum (or better yet, an email), since I can't imagine that people would appreciate being arbitrarily moved from 5.2 to 5.3 without notice. I got blasted by tech support for not following the forums, but frankly, I have better ways to spend my time than a daily reading of many different forums to find out if you've broken one of my websites or not, especially since it turns out that it wouldn't have told me anything anyway.

 

I do appreciate the quick follow up (within an hour of my original post). As you can see by the time of this reply, I do not haunt the forums.

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