hello everyone,

I am setting up Plesk 10 on Centos 6.2.

I'll install PHP 5.2 as fcgi-Version for a smooth migration of our customers and would like to offer PHP 5.4 as the alternative, rather than the default PHP 5.3.

Are there PHP 5.4-Packages available and are they reliable for production already or is it still too early?
I did find some packages in a repo from Remi, but have never heard of him before and would like to avoid any sort of conflict..

regards -Stephan

I might have some in atomic-testing today if you want to vet them against app compatibility. Thats usually the hold up, just waiting for all the php apps to catch up with the latest changes.

Thanks for the fast reply!

I'll gladly give it a shot. I can always downgrade back to 5.3 if necessary.. but if possible, I'd really like to just move ahead to 5.4.

Kind regards -Stephan

There are quite a number of backwards incompatible changes in PHP 5.4 (they also removed a bunch of features). Of course you're free to test it, but I'd read up on the changes first.

Migrating from PHP 5.3.x to PHP 5.4.x
http://php.net/migration54

Thanks for the info. Our migration would actually be PHP 5.2 directly to PHP 5.4, at least that's what I had imagined.

Our old servers are still running PHP 5.2 and on our new servers, PHP 5.2 will be installed as fcgi-Version (and configured as default for all hostings) and PHP 5.4 would be installed as module. The customers can switch back and forth and test as they wish.

I thought this would be the easiest and most future-proof...but I'm not sure, because 5.4 is still so young...

regards -Stephan

considering 5.4 does not have safe mode, using it as a module adds some risk compared to using it as fastcgi, I would think?

If you are skilled enough to be able to install two versions (I am not ) maybe think about using mod_ruid2 with the module version? Just a suggestion. I'm avoiding mod_ruid2 even though I'd much prefer it to php-fastcgi as I have some strange idea then when Parallels finally adds native mod_ruid2 to Plesk (not in v11 - maybe 12?) it will add some pain to the transition if I already have a version installed.

Yes, I have mod_ruid2 installed for the module-version and also got the 'Run PHP as User' addon for Plesk... seems to work great, as far as I can see.

I compiled php5.2 as cgi-version and added a separate handler in apache. Users can now switch back and forth simply by adding 'AddHandler php5-fastcgi .php .php5' to their .htaccess.

Without that line it's php 5.3 (currently) and with that line it runs php5.2 in /opt/php52/bin..

very cool.

And just to close this topic: We'll be going with PHP 5.3...