PHP UPGRADE

Platypus Linux server - May 2012 - PHP upgrade

NOTE: The following does not yet effect websites on the Hiruko server which is managed by a different company. However, in due course they may also upgrade.

PHP 5.3.1 has now been released as stable and is installed on the Platyus Brisbane Cloud server.

Please note this currently only affects cPanel clients. Plesk Windows Servers do not have the PHP upgrade available at this time.

There are a number of significant changes that php 5.3 introduces.

Most of these changes won't affect most clients however you should be aware of them.

These changes include:

1. The following settings are no longer supported with PHP 5.3.
   • zend_extension_ts
   • zend_extension_debug
   • extension_ts
   • zend.ze1_compatibility_mode
2. If the php.ini file has no date.timezone setting, it will be given one that matches PHP's best guess about what the correct timezone is. In 5.3.1 all date functions generate warnings when the local timezone has not been explicitly specified.
3. There is currently no version of Zend Optimizer available for PHP 5.3. According to Zend, a version of the Optimizer and Encoder that is compatabile with PHP 5.3 will be released "in the first quarter of 2010". It's possible that PHP scripts encoded with previous versions of Zend Guard will not work with this new version of Zend Optimizer once it is released.
4. The PHP OpenSSL extension no longer supports OpenSSL versions before 0.9.7.
5. PHP 5.3 introduces the E_DEPRECATED and E_USER_DEPRECATED error reporting levels. E_DEPRECATED is included in E_ALL, so many existing manipulations of the PHP error reporting level that attempt to mask warnings will fail to mask out the E_DEPRECATED messages. cPanel will attempt to mask out E_DEPRECATED from error_reporting setting of the main system php.ini file as part of the upgrade to PHP 5.3. You are still likely to see E_DEPRECATED warnings whenever a custom php.ini is used and when legacy scripts manipulates the error_reporting level directly. You may also want to set the display_errors setting in the php.ini file to off. Note that functions marked as deprecated in PHP 5.3 will be removed entirely in PHP 6.0. Silencing the E_DEPRECATED messages should be considered a short term fix. Code that generates these messages must eventually be updated for compliance with PHP 6.0.
6. To help deal with the migration difficulty cause by the E_DEPRECATED changes in PHP 5.3, cPanel includes an optional patch to remove E_DEPRECATED from E_ALL. This patch is intended to be used as a short term fix while legacy code is updated to be made aware of the E_DEPRECATED error level. Applying this patch means that legacy code will not accidentally turn on E_DEPRECATED messages while attempting to silence warnings (the traditional E_ALL & ~E_WARNING setting.) This patch was selected for inclusion in the build when we upgraded servers to the new release.
7. The following php.ini settings have been marked as deprecated in PHP 5.3. It is recommended that you disable these settings or silence deprecated warnings until you are able to upgrade so warnings will not be generated every time a PHP page is processed.
   • define_syslog_variables
   • register_globals
   • register_long_arrays
   • safe_mode
   • magic_quotes_gpc
   • magic_quotes_runtime
   • magic_quotes_sybase
8. The following functions have been marked as deprecated in PHP 5.3. It is recommended that you update any code which uses them or silence deprecated warnings until an upgrade is possible.
   • session_register
   • session_unregister
   • session_is_registered
   • define_syslog_variables
   • split
9. The ereg extension has been marked as deprecated in PHP 5.3. It is recommended that you update any code which uses this extension or silence deprecated warnings until an upgrade is possible.
10. The mail headers patch is no longer provided with PHP 5.3. Use the mail.add_x_header php.ini directive instead.
11. The following extensions have been removed from PHP 5.3:
    • mhash
    • pspell
    • msql
12. The following extensions are no longer shipped with PHP 5.3 and are now available via PECL:
    • ming
    • fbsql
    • ncurses
    • fdf
13. The following new extensions are available with PHP 5.3:
    • phar
    • sqlite3
    • fileinfo
    • intl (requires libicu)
    • enchant (requires libenchant)

See also http://www.php.net/releases/5_3_1.php

Of these changes the main changes that will affect most people are the removal of register_globals and session_*functions, which will mean a lot of older scripts where a temporary php.ini file is currently being used to keep functions such as register_globals On will no longer work and these scripts will need to be upgraded.

See Server announcements on www.platypusmedia.com.au

Tuesday, 26th May 2015
Newcastle, Australia