Upgrading PHP and MySQL

[Superman859]

I recently saw a thread about this but just wanted to make sure of a couple things.

I have a virtual dedi hosting plan with CentOS4 and Plesk 8.2.1 (I think). CentOS4 has php 4.3.7, which I want to upgrade to php5. This means I will probably also be upgrading MySQL.

I can find guides on how to do it, but I just want to make sure that I will not break Plesk. Will upgrading PHP and MySQL break Plesk at all, or are the only issues I will have to work with and worry about be general and related for servers with / without Plesk (such as runtime errors from the new version of PHP5, or other general problems that can arise).

I'm just not sure how control panels work or how they are integrated with the rest of the server. I'd like to upgrade, but I can't afford to break anything.

Thanks.

 

[Hedgren]

Hi:
There were issues with upgrading PHP on Debian: http://kb.swsoft.com/en/1762 , but not on Centos (http://kb.swsoft.com/en/1122 is not that critical). Since PHP is not part of Plesk, and Parallels does not build its own PHP, Plesk uses standard services which are installed on the system. If PHP is found on the system where Plesk is installed, Plesk will use it. If this installation is not found, Plesk will download and install standard packages of the corresponding OS vendor. Simply take PHP5 from the OS distribution and install by means of the OS packet manager in order to avoid possible dependencies conflicts.

There are no specific recommendations or steps because all the steps are identical to any other application update: 'rpm -Uvh' for RedHat-like OSes. If OS vendor does not provide such packages, then you can try to find PHP5 packages with the third parties. There are hundreds of custom builds found all over the world, for example a well known http://www.atomicrocketturtle.com has really been a great source for such updates for many years. The minor of problems which may appear with it are usually related to dependencies to third or system applications and can be solved in an ordinary way.

All dependent Plesk packages necessary for php5 upgrade can be found at http://autoupdate.plesk.com (64.131.90.31) and ftp://download1.swsoft.com , with the exception of PHP5 itself, which is not the part of Plesk.
In fact, you can try to update the package in single transaction (if your mirrors are set correctly), for example:
> yum update php5.x... (RPMs)