For January 2008, best PHP: 5.2.5 or 5.2.4? Best MySQL: 5.0.51 or 5.1?

[Christophe_O]

Currently best PHP: 5.2.5 or 5.2.4?
Currently best MySQL: 5.0.51 or 5.1?

P.S. In general, how often will I be needing to update the PHP and MySQL?
Annually or more like every 5 years?

All opinions welcome. Thank you.

References:
2007.11: Zachery: "I'd highly suggest updating php to 5.2.x... (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250620)"

2007.10: jason|xoxide: "Personally, I wouldn't go with any version of MySQL other than 5.0.45/5.0.46/5.0.48 and with any version of PHP other than 4.4.7 ...or 5.2.4. (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=242208)"

2007.08: Onimua: "Minimum: PHP 4.3.3... MySQL 4.0.16...
Recommended: PHP 4.4.2 or 5.1.2 or later... MySQL 5.0.19 or later. (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239492&highlight=mysql)"

For future reference, from Jason's signature:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux & CentOS Tutorials:
Upgrading to MySQL 5.0.54 (http://www.jasonlitka.com/2007/12/27/upgrading-to-mysql-5054-on-rhel-and-centos/) | PHP Caching/Acceleration with XCache (http://www.jasonlitka.com/2006/12/20/php-caching-and-acceleration-with-xcache/)
Upgrading to PHP 5.2.5 (http://www.jasonlitka.com/2007/11/16/upgrading-to-php-525-on-rhel-and-centos/) | Upgrading to httpd 2.2.6 (http://www.jasonlitka.com/2007/09/12/upgrading-to-httpd-226-on-rhel-and-centos/)

[jason|xoxide]

You should never be running anything older than the newest release of the installed version. If you're going to use PHP 5.2, use 5.2.5; if you're going to use 4.4 (please don't), go with 4.4.8.

As to MySQL, 5.0 is the GA version and 5.1 is currently a Release Candidate. If you're going to go with 5.0 then you should be running either 5.0.54 (newest Enterprise release) or 5.0.51 (newest Community release).

[tekguru]

Interesting this made me check my VPS... I'm running:

Apache 1.3.37 (latest 2.2.6)
PHP 4.4.7 (latest 5.2.5)
MySQL 4.1.22 (latest 5.0.51)

Is there any reason anyone can think of that I should NOT ask my host to update the versions I'm running to the latest revisions?

[Christophe_O]

Thank you for clearing things up Jason. Now I understand the numbering system better. I suspect that, like Vbulletin, it also may be best not to bother with any brand new x.x.0 version. Wait until x.x.1 when it has been de-bugged... or I should suppose...

[jason|xoxide]

Interesting this made me check my VPS... I'm running:

Apache 1.3.37 (latest 2.2.6)
PHP 4.4.7 (latest 5.2.5)
MySQL 4.1.22 (latest 5.0.51)

Is there any reason anyone can think of that I should NOT ask my host to update the versions I'm running to the latest revisions?

The newest versions in those release chains are 1.3.41, 4.4.8, and 4.1.22. Your MySQL is fine but I would suggest upgrading httpd to 1.3.41 and PHP to 4.4.8.

As to upgrading to httpd 2.2.x, PHP 5.2.x, and MySQL 5.0.x, there may be breaking changes involved so you'd want to make sure that all of your code works before migrating a live site.

[tekguru]

Thanks for that - it makes sense. I've asked ServInt to go ahead with the upgrade on that basis.

[tekguru]

Servint have come back with:

I have updated php to version 4.4.8. Apache is still compiled with version 1.3.39 as this .. is the latest version of apache 1.3.x that Cpanel supports. Cpanel also supports apache 2.0 and apache 2.2.


Taking this into account do you think it is worth considering Apache 2.0 or 2.2? Are there any gains to be had over 1.3.39?

[jason|xoxide]

Don't use 2.0.x. Either stick with 1.3.x or go with 2.2.x.

[tekguru]

Yep Servint have recommended we stick with 1.3 for the moment, so I guess it would be foolish not to follow their advise.