Vphp install Schedule

[admin]

We will be changing the way php runs to make it more secure, we call it vphp ( vortech PHP ) this will allow php to run as the user, it will also write files as the user and no more www or httpd owners on php files, this has been tested for about 2 months and is already running on 2 systems with zero issues to any scripts.

We will be taking the upgrade slow with 2 systems every other day and only 4 systems a week here is the layout:

Unix19 and Unix20 – 9/13 7:00PM - until done.
Unix18 and Unix17 – 9/15 7:00PM - until done.

That covers this week, there should be no down time other than apache restarting on the server to use the new system.

I will update this post as needed, if you have any questions please post them here.


FYI this has been fully tested to the best of our ablities and is working 100% on 2 systems already I think unix10 and can't remember the other.

[mdallarosa]

The other system is unix15. It has been running with vphp since June 20 2005. The only issue i can remember is some GD libraries fucntionallity being disabled when system was updated. They were restored and everything has been running smoothly since then. I have a client with intensive php use on unix15 and no problems were reported.

[mdallarosa]

I think that was it was installed on unix15 was SUPHP, maybe is not exactly what you will be installing now. Maybe a modified version?

[dpyers]

Do you have a list of what the changes are that make it vphp?

[Dean]

This is Thiago's baby, so he would be able to give you more specifics, but I can give you the basics.

In Apache world, you have two options when running PHP. (I am referring to Apache 1.3 since Apache 2 with the mod that supports what we are trying to achieve is way too slow)

One is to run mod_php, which is very fast, as it essentially makes PHP a part of Apache. The downside is that all PHP runs as the httpd/www user. This raises security concerns since so many people have to change ownership of their files to httpd/www in order for PHP to write to them, or chmod them to 777 which is incredibly insecure.

The other option for running PHP with Apache is PHP as CGI. This gives better security since everything is run as the website's user via suexec. The downside for this one is that it is slow since you have to keep loading the php binary every time someone wants to parse a page.

There is a project out there called suPHP. It aims to create an Apache module that essentially bridges mod_php and PHP as CGI. It allows you to keep the php binary in memory, and provides interprocess communication.

Unfortunately, suPHP is very beta and does not support a lot of things, such as most of the htaccess/virtual host PHP flags. What Thiago has done (among other things) is rewritten suPHP from scratch and included support for passing PHP flags and custom INI settings from Apache to the php binary.

The result is that you have a web server that acts as though you are using mod_php, both in speed and features, but with the security of running PHP as the user.

Really a super project.

[dpyers]

I am suitably impressed

Hey guys, the upgrade will start on unnix20 and unix19 in the next hour or so. Please be advised that this should not cause any big issue but if anything comes up, please submit a TT and we will be here to help...

[admin]

unix19 is not done yet due to some network issues, I will post when we plan to include this one. Thanks

Network problem was solved. vPHP is installed and running on Unix19 and Unix20. If you have any issue on those servers, please send a TT so we can analize and fix the issue ASAP.

Today, Monday Sep 19th, we will install vPHP on Unix18 and Unix17 and on Wednesday Sep 21st we will install it on Unix16 and unix14. (Unix15 was the first server to run it).

Unix17 and Unix18 are running vPHP with PHP-4.4.0.
If you guys see any problems, please let us know via TT.

[cpnetworld]

Can it affect the operations of phpmyadmin - it is not working on MySQL4 - though it is working fine on MySQL3

Rakesh

[admin]

Check out this post http://forum.vortechhosting.com/show...threadid=10564 for phpmyadmin issues. It poped up due to something else going on behind the sense that should not have affected anything. But seems it gave phpmyadmin a bit of a problem.

Today we will be doing Unix16 and Unix14... Stay tunned.

Unix14 and Unix16 are now running vPHP. If you notice anything strange on this server, please let us know by submiting a TT.