Hi Yves, Please excuse my off-list mail, but I don't want to get into a php4-keep-it-or-not discussion :-).
Taking that you are only dealing with a rather small amount of sites, it might be a good idea to switch to a different distribution which offers long time support over another couple of years and still includes php4. The migration of the sites to that new server should be very smooth and everybody's happy ;-). It's also a lot easier than dealing with unsupported ebuilds and packages over a longer period. A nice alternative to gentoo, with that LTS support, is e.g. debian 4. Good luck Yves Thommes wrote: > hey lindsay, thank you for your feedback. > > i already was playing around a little bit with php4 and php5 concurrent > installations and they worked very well. > > what we've actually done so far was put all of the websites (about a > dozen), which absolutely require php4 to run, on a dedicated box. > all other web servers have been running php5 only for several months now. > the problem with the deprecated php4 module ebuild would of course only > affected this single box. > > of course migrating a website from php4-only to php5-compatible software > is mainly a political decision in my case. > i'm rather in a tight spot, management of course doesn't want to drop > the customers and either the customer doesn't have the resources to pay > for a migration, or maybe even the web-agency who developed the website > several years ago has been put out of business or <insert any business > reason you like> and we don't have the know-how ourselves to migrate the > system. > > so i only saw the situation from a system administrators point of view > who only wanted to know of there was a possibility that the php4 ebuild > would only be masked or if there was some other solutions (like local > portage overlay, just as an example). you wouldn't believe how many > customers would rather be ok to be hosted on a server where we could no > more guarantee the security for their website because the technology > used is no longer supported, than invest into a migration to a newer > system. > > the problem with the missing php4 ebuild is not about "no more php4 > security updates", i know that php4 support has been officially dropped, > the problem would rather have been with dependencies i guess. and that's > why i posted to this mailing list, just to get advice, i suppose that's > one of the purposes of a mailing list. > > thanks for your help, i guess i'll figure something out. > > > Lindsay Haisley wrote: >> On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 10:19 -0600, Andrew Gaffney wrote: >> >>> So...you know enough to run your ISP on Gentoo (at least I'd hope >>> so), but you think that the ebuilds being removed from portage will >>> mean you can no longer have php4? If you really want to keep it, >>> stick the ebuilds in an overlay and stop complaining. >>> >>> Gentoo is removing the php4 ebuilds from the tree, because it won't >>> be security-supported by upstream very shortly. Gentoo doesn't have >>> the manpower to do security backports and such....we just bump to the >>> next version. Until you're paying to use Gentoo, please don't >>> complain about how the distro does things. Especially when the >>> complaint it "stupid". >>> >> >> Andrew, please be moderate in your responses. We're all doing the best >> we can with a complex technology. Information and sound analysis help. >> Sarcasm and insulting words don't. This is a technical forum. >> >> Yves, the bottom line here is that PHP4 has been found by the upstream >> PHP developers to have security flaws that aren't easily addressed, and >> probably won't be. Many distributions, not just Gentoo are dropping >> support for it since the upstream development focus has switched to PHP5 >> and PHP6. >> >> Some of your customers may have issues with their scripts and PHP5, but >> having done this upgrade as a consultant to a programmer with a major, >> very OO PHP-based research software system, my observation is that the >> problems are probably relatively minor and easily fixed. Two things to >> remember: >> >> 1. It's important to take a good look at the php.ini files for both >> PHP4 and PHP5 and make sure that all the options which might affect >> script execution are compatible. >> >> 2. It's possible (there's a Gentoo HOWTO on it) to run both PHP4 and >> PHP5 on the same system and use either one on a per-directory or >> per-file basis, so you can switch potentially problem customers over to >> PHP5 one by one. >> >> My guess is that upgrading globally to PHP5 will affect a relatively >> small percentage of your customer base if php.ini synchronization is >> good. PHP5 is very backward compatible in most things. Your decision >> and your actions must also depend on your evaluation of the security >> risks, and how the value of your work in maintaining PHP4 and dealing >> with possible security breaches balances against the work involved in >> upgrading to PHP5 and helping your customers with possible scripting >> issues. >> >> There are a lot of ways to maintain an obsolete package, the simplest of >> which is to download the upstream developers' source package and build >> and install it outside of Gentoo - not advisable but very doable. >> >> > -- regards, Georges Toth -- [email protected] mailing list
