[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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