[ibiblio-announce] CHANGE NOTICE: php 5.2.6-4 now in testing
Don Sizemore
dls at metalab.unc.edu
Mon Jan 5 14:02:30 EST 2009
Hello ibiblio-announce,
We've had many requests for PHP-5.2, and in response Cristóbal has
compiled PHP-5.2.6-4 RPMs for our web cluster. Please see below his
original announcement concerning the new packages and how to test your
site for the new version of PHP.
We plan to upgrade PHP on our web cluster on JANUARY 20, 2009.
If the timing of this upgrade poses insurmountable difficulties for you,
please do let us know via http://www.ibiblio.org/help/ and we'll work
something out.
Thank you,
Donald Sizemore
ibiblio.org
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:32:15 -0400
From: Cristóbal Palmer <cmpalmer at metalab.unc.edu>
Reply-To: no-reply at ibiblio.org
To: ibiblio-announce at lists.ibiblio.org, webgroup at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [ibiblio-announce] CHANGE NOTICE: php 5.2.6-4 now in testing
== Executive Summary ==
The following services are now running php 5.2.6-4:
* Web cluster testing & staging.
(http://www-dev.ibiblio.org)
* Vhost cluster testing & staging.
(eg. http://burmalibrary.org.test.ibiblio.org)
* Webmail.
(https://secure.ibiblio.org/webmail/)
!!! IMPORTANT !!!
* TEST YOUR SITE using the web cluster testing or vhost testing URL
that applies to you.
* Open a ticket if you have trouble testing your site
(http://www.ibiblio.org/help)
* Mediawiki, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other CMS software
packages care what URL they are called from, so using www-dev.ibiblio
or .test.ibiblio.org URLs may not work. Please file a ticket if this
is the case with your site.
== Full Change Notice ==
There is a major push within the PHP-based web development community to
move to PHP 5.2.x. Many Software packages that ibiblio contributors depend
on will drop support for releases of PHP older than 5.2.x in the coming
months. For that reason, we would like to use a 5.2.x version as soon as
possible. We have not yet set a date for an upgrade of our production PHP
version, but we will be announcing a date soon.
To facilitate the move, we have installed PHP 5.2.6-4 on chef, the
server that provides webmail. This server also acts as a staging area
where ibiblio contributors can test their sites before they go live with
changes.
ibiblio contributors with ibiblio web directories
(http://www.ibiblio.org/example/) would use "www-dev" to access this
staging server (http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/example). Logs for your
directory as accessed from that URL are available from login.ibiblio.org
(tribal). When I'm logged into login.ibiblio.org, that would look like
this:
[admin at tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin at tribal www-dev]$ ls -alh www-dev_*
-rw-r--r-- 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 99K Sep 17 11:45 www-dev_access_log
-rw-r--r-- 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 227M Sep 18 17:00 www-dev_combined_log
-rw-r--r-- 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 63M Sep 18 16:33 www-dev_error_log
ibiblio contributors with virtual hosts (http://example.net) would use
".test.ibiblio.org" to access the staging server
(http://example.net.test.ibiblio.org). Logs for your vhost as accessed
from that URL are available from login.ibiblio.org (tribal). If you were
the webmaster of musopen.com, for example, that would look like this:
[admin at tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin at tribal www-dev]$ ls -alh musopen_*
-rw-r--r-- 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 4.6K Sep 18 17:09 musopen_error_log
-rw-r--r-- 1 nfsnobody nfsnobody 27K Sep 18 17:09 musopen_log
[admin at tribal www-dev]$ tail -4 musopen_error_log
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:29 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/favicon.ico
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:29 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/404
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:32 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/favicon.ico
[Thu Sep 18 17:08:32 2008] [error] [client 152.2.241.141] File does not exist: /public/vhost/m/musopen/html/404
Users of many common PHP-based packages will notice that in trying to
access their sites from the staging server, they get redirected to the
live cluster immediately, making it very difficult to test their sites. If
you are confident you know how to test, the ideal way would be for you to
take an unused, test sub-directory of your site and install a (small
please!) parallel version of your site there. So, for http://example.net
you might have http://example.net/dev-testing/ as your test directory. In
that directory you would install, for example, WordPress, BUT during the
setup process you would use
http://example.net.test.ibiblio.org/dev-testing/ to set up the site.
WordPress would then conclude that the proper URL is the .test.ibiblio.org
URL. ALSO be careful to use a different table prefix when setting up the
database for the test site. This is great for both you and us, since
nobody knows your site better than you do, including any plugins,
extensions, or widgets you might be using, and there are many more
contributor-run sites than there are staff hours to test.
The alternative is to file a ticket with us and trust us to test the
software package and plugin/extension/widget combinations that you tell us
you are using. If you are using the most recent Mediawiki or WordPress
with no plugins or extensions, then we have already tested that and
confirmed that it works.
Some caveats when installing a test version of any app that you may be
using:
* BACK UP your database before you start!!
* Use a sensible table prefix
* Try without any plugins/extensions/widgets before you try with all
your plugins/extensions/widgets.
* Add plugins/extensions/widgets one at a time.
As always, file a ticket if you have problems or questions.
Cheers,
--
Cristóbal Palmer
ibiblio.org systems administrator
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