Chicken and the Egg, 4.2.3+ and PHP updating

[daddybird292]

I received an email from my hosting company saying my version of CentOS needs to be updated to 64bit..... no problem, I'll just patch VB, get PHP to something modern and the in-place upgrade will be easy as pie.... except VB doesn't want to cooperate (LOL).

I was on VB 4.2.3 with PHP at 5.3.29 and MySQL is at 5.6.33

The other three options I have for PHP are: 5.4.45 / 5.5.38 / 5.6.30 (I'd really like to have a 5.6.x version on there).

So I upgrade PHP to 5.4.45...... Bam!!! VB breaks and I can't load any VB pages. Eventually I get it to run the update.php for VB 4.2.3PL2 and it comes back up. Whew....

So then I'm like: "Hey, it's on 4.2.3pl2.... it can handle PHP 5.5 now"..... BAM!!! VB broken again, same error except I can't get to the update.php at all. CRAP!!! Just for good measure, I load PHP 5.6.30 in case it wants to do something nice.... nope, no change. Back to PHP 5.4.45, and it comes back up. Whew....

Alright..... here goes VB 4.2.4rc3!!!! That'll knock this sucker out!!!! BAM!!! VB broken again..... no problem, it needs PHP 5.x right? Load up PHP 5.5.38.... same error as before. CRAP!!! I load 5.6.33..... same error..... can't get to the admincp or the update.php...... darn it!!!

Time to go over the top..... VB 4.2.5b2!!!! Yeah baby, we'll knock this sucker out!!! Load it up.... still on PHP 5.6.30...... BAM!!! No change. Can't get to a page, can't get to update.php.
Ok, you win, I lose.....
Downgrade to VB 4.2.3pl2 and PHP 5.4.45..... and it's back up. Arrrgh!!!!

How do you update PHP to align with what VB wants when updating VB before PHP breaks it and updating PHP before VB breaks it?!?!?!?
Chicken and the EGG.....

BTW, I love VB 4..... it's awesome.

Anyone else have this problem??? What did you do to fix it?

ty

[Mark.B]

If you are running 4.2.3 then it should work fine with php 5.6. My site does exactly that.

We would need to know exactly what happens if you switch to php 5.6. Behaviour, error messages, etc.
Also do you have any addons? Often it's addons that break as they aren't compatible with later versions of php.

[daddybird292]

Wow, you respond fast!! Thanks!
I loaded PHP 5.6.33 again so I could get the error message again, and it's:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function mysqli_init() in /home/lopdtraining/public_html/forums/includes/class_core.php on line 1348

I don't have any plugins/addons loaded, or anything special.... and the board was downed to prevent database damage (and backed up).
Any ideas? I can bring it back to PHP 5.4.45 and it'll come back up.. .is there something I should look for then?

Thanks a bunch, I'm always learning something new when stuff like this happens.

[Mark.B]

Looks like your host does not have mysqli compiled within php 5.6...you'll need to ask them to rectify this.

[daddybird292]

Thank you Mark