Shared hosting and Habari requirements
Massimiliano
provider met all the listed requirements: Apache 2.0.x, PHP 5.2.x
(with PDO), MySQL 5.
Two months ago I signed (and paid for) a 1-year renewal: current specs
are Apache 2.0.59, PHP 5.2.3 and MySQL 5.0.48
Today, while testing a patch, I found what I thought to be a bug [1].
tinyau noticed that I was probably running an obsolete version of the
PCRE library - 4.5 (Dec 2003) instead of 5.0 or higher - that
prevented HEAD to work as intended.
So I asked my hosting provider (which is quite expensive but with a
good reputation, at least for Italian standards) to upgrade this 5-
year-old library to a more recent version (PCRE is now at 7.7). They
refused to apply this "personalisation" and suggested me to switch to
VPS.
I wrote back that I thought the upgrade to be an update/bugfix for
their webserver, on the ground that the library is obsolete, that PHP
5.2.x bundles more recent versions [2], that PCRE is needed to support
multibyte characters (like latin characters with diacritics) and
consequently it is needed to support software that runs on PHP 5. I
don't know if this is all true, I was trying to make a point ;)
Support replied stating that on their shared hosting they have the
necessity to run only stable and tested software. "For instance, PHP
packages are not those of the CentOS repository. They are packages
customised and optimised for Plesk. Moreover, PHP in use does not
include PCRE" [?]. "As an exceptional measure" they upgraded the
library to version 7.3, "which is the latest almost-stable release for
the package in use", but higher than the one bundled with 5.2.3!
Now, I don't have a great knowledge of how a webserver is run. That's
why in 7 years of messing with websites, of which the latest two with
the current provider, I've always sticked to plain old shared hosting.
But, was it such a potential issue to upgrade that damn library
without sounding (to me) so arrogant? Were they right, and they just
did me a favour?
And, more important for the community: how can potential users be
certain that their providers meet the requirements, when there is not
some kind of standard for software on servers? I thought that mine was
fully compliant: then I found that little old library, dating back to
2003, that could have made my Habari lame for the next ten months.
Sorry for the rant, I had to share with someone :)
Massimiliano (iMassimiliano on IRC)
[1] http://trac.habariproject.org/habari/ticket/405
[2] http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php
rick c
First, so they did finally install an upgraded version of PCRE, right?
As far as whether this is normal behavior for a host or not, I don't
know. A shared hosting environment does require stable and tested
software, but to the company stable may mean "It works now and I don't
want to take a chance on breaking it."
I've always used shared hosting, first using static web pages. When I
got to the point of wanting to use WordPress and MySQL, the problems
with my host regarding stability and downtime were so great that I
left them and went to my next host. That host was okay for WordPress,
but their customer support was horrible and they were totally
unresponsive when I asked about having the software support to run
Habari. So I left them for my third host in 7 or 8 years. This host
ran PHP 4 as it's default, but let you run PHP 5 by using an AddType
command in your .htaccess file. There was only one library missing
that I know of, mbstring support. When I asked them for it, I told
them it was a standard library they had enabled for PHP4 but not PHP5.
Within a day they had mbstring support added to PHP5.
What I'm trying to say is that my experience has been that some shared
hosting has good support and is happy to add libraries that they can
be shown are standard, while others have rotten support. And cost
doesn't seem to be a factor. My first host was the most expensive one
I've used, while my current host, which offers the best support, is
also the cheapest. When it starts getting close to time for your term
to end, I would look around before renewing.
Rick Cockrum
On May 29, 3:47 pm, Massimiliano <massimiliano.farine...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Owen Winkler
>
> Now, I don't have a great knowledge of how a webserver is run. That's
> why in 7 years of messing with websites, of which the latest two with
> the current provider, I've always sticked to plain old shared hosting.
> But, was it such a potential issue to upgrade that damn library
> without sounding (to me) so arrogant? Were they right, and they just
> did me a favour?
There are many cases where the proverb "the customer is always right" is
not true; however, this is not one of them.
If the version of PCRE installed with the release version of PHP is Y,
then they should at least be able to direct you to one of the following:
a) The notice that indicates that Y is unstable or insecure, and that
remaining at X until this is corrected is the recommended course of action.
b) Their service policy indicating when updates and upgrades will be
applied, and how that does not include keeping standard versions of
common libraries on your shared server.
Particularly, if your host is only willing to do the minimal work to get
Plesk running on your server so that they can offer shared hosting to
its customers, then you're not dealing with a good host.
Dealing with shoddy shared hosts is partially what has driven me to VPS
hosting. Don't get me wrong - there are good ones out there. In my
jaded experience, they all start out good, but all eventually go bad.
It's just a matter of how much time you have before you need to move to
a fresh host.
It's my opinion that hosts are a dime a dozen. There are rare occasions
when paying more for service gets you something. The host we use for
work is a good example, since they provide 24/7 technical phone support
when something goes wrong. But in my opinion, paying more for a host
that's "better" that can't quantify *how* they're better is throwing
money in the trash. Decide what you need in terms of support, and make
sure that your host offers that. In our case for work, we actually
visited the host's datacenter. While that might not be possible in
every case, knowing where to go to and what happens when you complain
can be very decision-informing.
> And, more important for the community: how can potential users be
> certain that their providers meet the requirements, when there is not
> some kind of standard for software on servers? I thought that mine was
> fully compliant: then I found that little old library, dating back to
> 2003, that could have made my Habari lame for the next ten months.
I've always thought that we would be wise to offer a pre-test for Habari
compatibility. What might work ideally (to briefly diverge into what is
likely more a -dev discussion than a -users discussion) is to have a web
service to which you could feed the phpinfo URL of a host. In this way,
we could create a list of known search parameters (PCRE version, PDO,
etc), and search for them in the output of a host's actual phpinfo output.
This wouldn't work in every case (possibly many false negatives), but if
a host passed, you'd know they were closer to being compatible than
those that don't pass.
Of course, reports like yours that indicate specific required features
are very helpful in building such a tool.
> Sorry for the rant, I had to share with someone :)
> Massimiliano (iMassimiliano on IRC)
As I said above - without reports like this, we wouldn't know what to
tell other users. So I'm glad you shared.
If anyone else has trouble reports such as this, please do post them here.
Owen
Massimiliano
> First, so they did finally install an upgraded version of PCRE, right?
> When it starts getting close to time for your term to end, I would look around before renewing.
there is one available :)
Owen Winkler wrote:
> If the version of PCRE installed with the release version of PHP is Y,
> then they should at least be able to direct you to one of the following:
> a) The notice that indicates that Y is unstable or insecure, and that
> remaining at X until this is corrected is the recommended course of action.
> b) Their service policy indicating when updates and upgrades will be
> applied, and how that does not include keeping standard versions of
> common libraries on your shared server.
updated", then they add that "standard configuration of an OS is often
lacking of security, so useless and potentially vulnerable services
are deactivated". They promote and sell you Apache 2 and PHP 5.2, but
only when you've bought them you know how much there is.
> I've always thought that we would be wise to offer a pre-test for Habari
> compatibility. What might work ideally (to briefly diverge into what is
> likely more a -dev discussion than a -users discussion) is to have a web
> service to which you could feed the phpinfo URL of a host. In this way,
> we could create a list of known search parameters (PCRE version, PDO,
> etc), and search for them in the output of a host's actual phpinfo output.
handy. On hp.o perhaps?
Thank you both, I appreciated your replies.
Massimiliano