The end of PHP 4

[IDN]

Doesn't anyone believe in the term if it isn't broken, don't fix it? PHP and MySQL are some large apps, same with Apache 2.

[---MAD---]

About time!

[Reeve of Shinra]

I am running:
Apache 1.3.33
PHP 4.4.1
Mysql 4.1.11

I figure I may as well upgrade them all, what should I upgrade to and what order should they be upgraded in?

[daemon]

Doesn't anyone believe in the term if it isn't broken, don't fix it? PHP and MySQL are some large apps, same with Apache 2.

PHP4 is very broken in terms of it's object-oriented support. PHP5 fixes many things to make it much, much superior to PHP4. And unless people upgrade, developers can't make use of those things. Also, it takes virtually no effort to upgrade, so there's no reason to not upgrade; just spend about half an hour to wait for things to compile.

I am running:
Apache 1.3.33
PHP 4.4.1
Mysql 4.1.11

I figure I may as well upgrade them all, what should I upgrade to and what order should they be upgraded in?

I'd do MySQL first because PHP5 will have to link against the libraries (as MySQL is no longer bundled with PHP), then Apache because PHP will need to link against the SAPI module, and then finally PHP.

[Reeve of Shinra]

Out of curosity, with the end of life of PHP4 announced, will vbulletin 4.0 be programed to take advantage of PHP5 and up?

[mdemon]

Off topic - sorry!

I'd love to use 5 etc. In fact, I'd love to use 4.3.3. But no. Fasthosts (my ISP) are stuck on 4.3.2 - "with no plans to upgrade".

So, anyone clever out there able to tell me how I can upgrade???! (3.0.something and waaaaaay overdue...)

TIA!

[filburt1]

If they have no plans to upgrade, I'd have no plans to keep giving them money. Find another host.

[Quillz]

If they have no plans to upgrade, I'd have no plans to keep giving them money. Find another host.

I would agree with you here, but I'm sure many of the largest host can't just upgrade as someone could with a personal web server. They may host thousands of accouts, and rely on PHP 4 for a specific task.

[Wayne Luke]

PHP 5.0 was released in July of 2004 (almost three years ago). PHP 4.3.3 was released in August of 2003. We're not talking bleeding edge software here. Any webhost that has their customer's best interests in mind and wants to continue receiving their money should have later versions available. The current for PHP 4 is 4.4.6 and would not make any applications not compatible with 5 stop working. Those developers who haven't made their applications compatible with PHP 5 need to update as well.

[Dream]

I'll update when Debian updates their packages, and that can take some time...

Right now, I'm using

Apache v1.3.33
PHP 4.3.10-19
MySQL 4.1.11-Debian_4sarge7

Hearing that "PHP 4.3.3 was released in August of 2003" almost makes me cry.

[mdemon]

Thanks for the comments - I now have more ammo to use. I guess I'll just have to backtrack through the vB updates until I find one which will work with 4.3.2. Any ideas?

(I'd rather not switch hosts as I pay £49 GBP per year and that's it. No bandwidth charges or anything. That's about all I want to cough up for the site as it's for fun, not profit. So, I have to make the best of what I have! )

[Scott MacVicar]

Thanks for the comments - I now have more ammo to use. I guess I'll just have to backtrack through the vB updates until I find one which will work with 4.3.2. Any ideas?

(I'd rather not switch hosts as I pay £49 GBP per year and that's it. No bandwidth charges or anything. That's about all I want to cough up for the site as it's for fun, not profit. So, I have to make the best of what I have! )

Fasthosts are offering PHP 5 on their linux servers, see http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/hosting/l.../full-details/

[Scott MacVicar]

I'll update when Debian updates their packages, and that can take some time...

Right now, I'm using

Apache v1.3.33
PHP 4.3.10-19
MySQL 4.1.11-Debian_4sarge7

Hearing that "PHP 4.3.3 was released in August of 2003" almost makes me cry.

You could just grab the php5 package from testing?

On my server we have the following packages.

ii  libapache2-mod-php5                      5.2.0-8+etch1                       server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (apache 2 modul
ii  php4                                     4.4.4-8+etch1                       server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (meta-package)
ii  php4-auth-pam                            0.4-9.2                             A PHP4 extension for PAM authentication
ii  php4-cli                                 4.4.4-8+etch1                       command-line interpreter for the php4 scripting language
ii  php4-common                              4.4.4-8+etch1                       Common files for packages built from the php4 source
ii  php4-gd                                  4.4.4-8+etch1                       GD module for php4
rc  php4-imagick                             0.9.11+1-4                          ImageMagick module for php4
ii  php4-imap                                4.4.4-8+etch1                       IMAP module for php4
ii  php4-ldap                                4.4.4-8+etch1                       LDAP module for php4
ii  php4-mcrypt                              4.4.4-8+etch1                       MCrypt module for php4
ii  php4-mysql                               4.4.4-8+etch1                       MySQL module for php4
ii  php4-pear                                4.4.4-8+etch1                       PHP Extension and Application Repository (transitional packag
ii  php4-snmp                                4.4.4-8+etch1                       SNMP module for php4
ii  php4-sqlite                              1.0.2-12+b1                         PHP4 bindings to SQLite, a file-based SQL engine
ii  php5                                     5.2.0-8+etch1                       server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (meta-package)
ii  php5-cgi                                 5.2.0-8+etch1                       server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (CGI binary)
ii  php5-cli                                 5.2.0-8+etch1                       command-line interpreter for the php5 scripting language
ii  php5-common                              5.2.0-8+etch1                       Common files for packages built from the php5 source
ii  php5-dev                                 5.2.0-8+etch1                       Files for PHP5 module development
ii  php5-gd                                  5.2.0-8+etch1                       GD module for php5
ii  php5-imap                                5.2.0-8+etch1                       IMAP module for php5
ii  php5-mhash                               5.2.0-8+etch1                       MHASH module for php5
ii  php5-mysql                               5.2.0-8+etch1                       MySQL module for php5

PHP 4 is configured as a CGI.

[RedTyger]

Some current (well, as of February) PHP version statistics:

PHP4 usage:


All other PHP usage:


I wonder if the idea is to give a gentle push in the direction of straight from 4 to 6. I can imagine that some of the big shared server providers would be looking that way.

[Dream]

You could just grab the php5 package from testing?

Thanks for the tip Scott. Are the test packages secure to use? Not the software they come with, the packages themselves?

And do they install over the normal ones?