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  • From: Don Sizemore <dls AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: ibiblio-announce AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ibiblio-announce] CHANGE NOTICE: php 5.2.6-4 now in testing
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 14:02:30 -0500 (EST)


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@tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin@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@tribal ~]$ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
[admin@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@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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  • [ibiblio-announce] CHANGE NOTICE: php 5.2.6-4 now in testing, Don Sizemore, 01/05/2009

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