UPDATE – 11/03/08, 3:42 AM Central: Project completed!

All software has been upgraded to current versions as outlined below. cPanel has been re-upgraded to version 11.24.0, and this time it did not kill Apache. (This was the ultimate goal behind the software updates – that this new major version of cPanel would play more nicely with current versions of server software rather than the old versions we were running.)

We’ve verified everything is running correctly, except for the couple of sites which had old scripts or modules which are not PHP 5 compliant. (Such are very few & far between.) We will be working with those clients directly to get those issues resolved.

All systems are “Go” and the upgrade project has been completed! :) If you have any questions or need assistance with anything, please contact us anytime. We are always happy to hear from you! ##

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UPDATE – 11/03/08, 01:53 AM Central: We’re still at it! :)

A big “thank you” to cPanel, who graciously answered our MySQL ticket literally within 10 minutes, restored MySQL to version 4.1, escalated to Tier 2, and had the new MySQL 5 installed within the hour. They were friendly, helpful, and fast!

We then upgraded to Apache 2.2.10/PHP 5.2.6 with no further issues. All in all, the new Apache, MySQL and PHP are working beautifully.

Among other things, we were sure to compile in:

  • cURL and cURL-SSL
  • IMAP
  • DAV
  • GD
  • json
  • freetype
  • gettext
  • mhash
  • mcrypt
  • mbstring
  • SOAP
  • Zend
  • and much more :)

We’ve gone through every site hosted on the server and verified they are all working. We surfed through various parts of sites trying to find errors. We found very few, and will be in touch with site owners regarding what we found.

We have one final thing to take care of re. Ioncube loaders, and then we will consider the server upgrade project complete.

We’ll be writing and sending out an email newsletter Monday to explain what was all done and what improvements this brings you.

As before, if you find any problems with your websites, please contact us immediately. We will do what we can to help you.

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UPDATE – 11/02/08 11:23 PM Central: All data is safe and secure. We have full dumps of all the databases taken pre-upgrade, and we moved several heavy database-driven sites to a PHP 5 server to complete the upgrade on those on a per-site basis (and have those sites able to come right back online if there were any errors). Those transfers all went smoothly as well. Please rest assured there is NO data loss and no data has been affected. The issues lie strictly with operating system packages – how the server runs. This has nothing to do with data.

The upgrade from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5 would not complete. We’ve opened a ticket with cPanel and they are in the process of fixing and completing the upgrade to MySQL 5.

We will verify that MySQL 5 is running properly before moving forward; the next step is to recompile Apache to Apache 2 and PHP to PHP 5. ##

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We are in the process of upgrading shared server ’svensbluff’ to use Apache version 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5.

This is a big upgrade, but will bring major service enhancements to clients.

Additionally, PHP 4 has gone “EOL” (end of life) which means there are no further upgrades available for it, and we would be in a very awkward, reactive situation if (when) a new exploit is discovered in it. Rather than remain sitting ducks waiting for something to go wrong on old software, we are upgrading to current versions and packages. We can keep your sites and data more secure and better managed on the current versions and packages (as opposed to the old versions running now).

’svensbluff’ is our last shared server to be upgraded. Our other servers are already running Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5 without any problems. Most web hosts have long-since upgraded their servers to use Apache 2, MySQL 5 and PHP 5. This is the standard software configuration in hosting now.

If you discover any problems with your website, please contact us immediately. We are here, on duty, waiting to hear from you and we want to help you!

We’ll post further updates as the upgrade proceeds. ##