[CentOS] php 5.6 on CentOS 6

Sun Jun 21 20:38:16 UTC 2020
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>


On 6/21/20 1:36 PM, H wrote:
> On 06/21/2020 02:34 PM, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
>> Am 21.06.2020 um 20:30 schrieb H:
>>> I am in the process of moving various apps and data off a CentOS 6 server to a new server running CentOS 7. As part of the migration process I need to upgrade an app and corresponding data files which requires php 5.6. I do have php 5.5 (and 5.4) installed since earlier but now tried to install php 5.6 from SCL which failed.
>>>
>>> This is the package I tried:
>>>
>>> https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-php56/
>>>
>>> but the error message is that there is no package 5.6. Is this correct and what would the recommended procedure then be since I do need 5.6 for this. Use Remi's collection or something else? I was hoping SCL would have it since it is well-tried and easy to sandbox on the computer.
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>> H
>>
>> PHP 5.6 is EOL. https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
>>
>> Why would a project like SCL spend any efford on patching that old PHP release? Everyone using PHP is happy to get a current release. If your application insists on using 5.6 then move on and look for a different application.
>>
>> Alexander
>>
> 
> That was not helpful. I gave the rationale in my e-mail message.
> 

This my reply is not intended for the OP, as he stated he will not 
listen about End Of Life of of PHP 5. Just in case anybody comes across 
this thread, please read what is written on the page referred to by 
Alexander Dalloz:

 >> PHP 5.6 is EOL. https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

This in plain English language says that php 5 is not supported by 
vendor since Jan 1 2019, i.e. almost a year a a half now. This means 
that PHP development team does not release security patches, and even 
though RedHat "backports" patches to older versions, difference in 
internals between PHP version 5 and version 7 is quite significant, so 
you should not assume that even if RedHat team still backports security 
patches for issues discovered in version 7, you are safe: there may be 
still be issues in version 5 which by no means are discovered by anyone.

This boils down to one thing. If you still have anything using PHP 
version 5.[any] you should migrate this to PHP version at least 7.2. You 
ideally should have done that before Jan. 1, 2019.

I hope, this helps somebody.

By no means I meant to question the brilliant job RedHat does 
backporting (taking my hat off and bowing to RedHat here). However, as I 
said, there may be bugs in PHP 5 that will not be relevant to PHP 7, 
hence there is nothing to backport to fix them.

Valeri

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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